1

Text, translation, and commentary on Epiphanes, On Justice

The manuscript tradition

The excerpts from Epiphanes’s On Justice are embedded in Clement of Alexandria’s Stromata 3.2. The text of the Stromata is preserved in the manuscript Laurentianus Pluteus V,3 (eleventh century), which is hereafter labeled “L.” A copy of this manuscript, which does not present significant variants, dates to the sixteenth century and is now in Paris (Suppl. Gr. 250).¹

The edition of the Stromata followed here is the GCS edition of Otto Stählin, Ludwig Früchtel, and Ursula Treu.² I have rejected a few unnecessary emendations and have made minor alterations in the punctuation of the Greek text. The GCS text is also followed, with modifications, in the more recent edition published by Patrick Descourtieux and Alain Le Boulluec.³

I begin with a critical edition and initial translation only of the excerpts from Epiphanes’s On Justice. Afterward, I will present the framing context in Clement’s Stromata before turning to comment on Stromata 3.2 as a whole.

Critical text and translation of Epiphanes, On Justice

Key to the apparatus

· He = D. Heinsius

· Hiller = Eduard Hiller

· Ma = Joseph B. Mayor

· St = O. Stählin

· Sy = Friedrich Sylburg

· Wi = Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Möllendorff

Excerpt 1: Justice as equal sharing, a law both cosmic and divine

· 1 3.2.6.1. ἡ δικαιοσύνη τοῦ θεοῦ κοινωνία τις ἐστίν μετ’ ἰσότητος.

ἴσος γέ τοι πανταχόθεν ἐκταθεὶς οὐρανὸς κύκλῳ τὴν γῆν περιέχει πᾶσαν, καὶ πάντας ἡ νὺξ ἐπ’ ἴσης ἐπιδείκνυται τοὺς ἀστέρας, τόν τε τῆς ἡμέρας αἴτιον καὶ πατέρα τοῦ φωτὸς ἥλιον ὁ θεὸς ἐξέχεεν ἄνωθεν ἴσον ἐπὶ γῆς ἅπασι τοῖς

· 5 βλέπειν δυναμένοις, οἵ δὲ κοινῇ πάντες βλέπουσιν, 3.2.6.2. ἐπεὶ μὴ διακρίνει πλούσιον ἤ πένητα, δῆμον ἤ ἄρχοντα, ἄφρονάς τε καὶ τοὺς φρονοῦντας, θηλείας ἄρσενας, ἐλευθέρους δούλους· ἀλλ’ οὐδὲ τῶν ἀλόγων παρὰ τοῦτο ποιεῖται τι, πᾶσι δὲ ἐπ’ ἴσης τοῖς ζῷοις κοινὸν αὐτὸν ἐκχέας ἄνωθεν.

· 10 ἀγαθοῖς τε καὶ φαύλοις τὴν δικαιοσύνην ἐμπεδοῖ μηδενὸς δυναμένου πλεῖον ἔχειν, μηδὲ ἀφαιρεῖσθαι τὸν πλησίον, ἵν’ αὐτὸς κἀκείνου τὸ φῶς διπλασίασας ἔχῃ. 3.2.6.3. ἥλιος κοινὰς τροφὰς ζῷοις ἅπασιν ἀνατέλλει, δικαιοσύνης [τε] τῆς κοινῆς ἅπασιν ἐπ’ ἴσης δοθείσης, καὶ εἰς τὰ τοιαῦτα βοῶν γένος ὁμοίως γίνεται ὡς αἱ βόες καὶ συῶν ὡς οἱ σύες καὶ προβάτων ὡς τὰ πρόβατα καὶ τὰ

· 15 λοιπὰ πάντα· 3.2.6.4. δικαιοσύνη γὰρ ἐν αὐτοῖς ἀναφαίνεται ἡ κοινότης. ἔπειτα κατὰ κοινότητα πάντα ὁμοίως κατὰ γένος σπείρεται, τροφή τε κοινὴ χαμαὶ νεμομένοις ἀνεῖται πᾶσι τοῖς κτήνεσι καὶ πᾶσιν ἐπ’ ἴσης, οὐδενὶ νόμῳ κρατουμένη, τῇ δὲ παρὰ τοῦ διδόντος κελεύσαντος χορηγίᾳ συμφώνως ἅπασι δικαιοσύνῃ παροῦσα. 3.2.7.1. ἀλλ’ οὐδὲ τὰ τῆς γενέσεως νόμον ἔχει

· 20 γεγραμμένον, μετεγράφη γὰρ ἄν· σπείρουσι δὲ καὶ γεννῶσιν ἐπ’ ἴσης, κοινωνίαν ὑπὸ δικαιοσύνης ἔμφυτον ἔχοντες.

κοινῇ πᾶσιν ἐπ’ ἴσης ὀφθαλμὸν εἰς τὸ βλέπειν ὁ ποιητής τε καὶ πατὴρ πάντων δικαιοσύνῃ νομοθετήσας τῇ παρ’ αὐτοῦ παρέσχεν, οὐ διακρίνας θήλειαν ἄρρενος, οὐ λογικὸν ἀλόγου, καὶ καθάπαξ οὐδενὸς οὐδέν, ἰσότητι δὲ καὶ

· 25κοινότητι μερίσας τὸ βλέπειν ὁμοίως ἑνὶ κελεύσματι πᾶσι κεχάρισται.

Translation

· 3.2.6.1. The justice of God is a certain communality joined with equality.

· Heaven, surely, is equally spread out on every side and encompasses the earth in a circle. Night, moreover, equally manifests all the stars. God has poured out the sun from above upon earth equally as cause of the day and father of the light for all who can see. And all see in common, 3.2.6.2. since he (God) does not discriminate a rich person from a poor one, a citizen from a ruler, fools from sages, females, males, free people, slaves (Gal 3:28; Col 3:11). Not even in the case of non-reasoning animals does anything count against this point.

· He (God) has equally poured out (the sun) from above as common to all animals. He confirms his justice for good and evil people; none are able to have more or deprive their neighbor so that one has twice the light of another. 3.2.6.3. The sun brings up common nourishment for all animals, since a common justice is equally bestowed on all. The same applies for the species of cows as for cows, the species of pigs as for pigs, the species of sheep as for sheep, and all the rest. 3.2.6.4. This is because communality is manifest as justice among them.

· Then, on the basis of communality, all are sown according to species. Common food rises from the soil for all cattle who graze, and for all equally. It is not controlled by any law. Rather, it is harmoniously present to all through the abundance of the Giver and Commander by means of justice. 3.2.7.1. Nor is there a law written for matters of reproduction, for it would be copied out. Animals sow their seed and reproduce with equality, having communality inborn at the hands of Justice.

· Upon all in common, the creator and father of all equally bestowed the eye for seeing, legislating with Justice beside him. He did not differentiate female from male (Gal 3:28), rational from irrational—in short, anything from anything else. Rather, with equality and communality, he distributed the ability to see. In the same manner, and with one command, he bestowed it on all.

Excerpt 2: Human laws introduce corruption

· 3.2.7.2. οἱ νόμοι δέ ἀνθρώπων ἀμαθίαν κολάζειν μὴ δυνάμενοι παρανομεῖν ἐδίδαξαν· ἡ γὰρ ἰδιότης τῶν νόμων τὴν κοινωνίαν τοῦ θείου νόμου κατέτεμεν καὶ παρατρώγει, … ‘διὰ νόμου τὴν ἁμαρτίαν ἔγνων’· 3.2.7.3. τὸ τε ἐμὸν καὶ τὸ σόν, διὰ τῶν νόμων παρεισελθεῖν, μηκέτι εἰς κοινότητα, κοινά τε γὰρ,

· 5 καρπουμένων μῆτε

· γῆν μήτε κτήματα.

· 3.2.7.4. κοινῇ γὰρ ἅπασιν ἐποίησε τὰς ἀμπέλους, αἵ μή<τε> στρουθὸν μήτε κλέπτην ἀπαρνοῦνται, καὶ τὸν σῖτον οὕτως καὶ τοὺς ἄλλους καρπούς. ἡ δὲ κοινωνία παρανομηθεῖσα καὶ τὰ τῆς ἰσότητος, ἐγέννησε θρεμμάτων καὶ καρπῶν κλέπτην.

Translation

· 3.2.7.2. But the laws, incapable of punishing human ignorance, taught (people) to act unlawfully. For the individuality of the laws tore apart and chewed up the commonality of divine law … “Through law I have come to know sin” (Rom 7:7). 3.2.7.3. What is mine and yours, crept in through laws (Rom 5:20), when neither earth nor possessions—for they are common—were any longer enjoyed for common use—not even marriage.

· 3.2.7.4. For he (God) made vines for all in common, vines which are denied neither to the sparrow nor to the thief (cf. Matt 6:19–20, 26), along with wheat and other harvested products. When communality was legislated against, along with other matters of equality, it produced the thievery of animals and harvested products (Rom 7:7).

Excerpt 3: Equality in sexual relationships

· 3.2.8.1. κοινῇ τοίνυν ὁ θεὸς ἅπαντα ἀνθρώπῳ ποιήσας καὶ τὸ θῆλυ τῷ ἄρρενι κοινῇ συναγαγὼν καὶ πάνθ’ ὁμοίως τὰ ζῷα κολλήσας τὴν δικαιοσύνην ἀνέφηνεν κοινωνίαν μετ’ ἰσότητος.

· 3.2.8.2. οἵ δὲ γεγονότες οὕτω, τὴν συνάγουσαν κοινωνίαν τὴν γένεσιν αὐτῶν

· 5 ἀπηρνήθησαν καὶ φασιν· ‘ὁ μίαν ἀγόμενος ἐχέτω,’ δυναμένων κοινωνεῖν ἁπάντων, ὥσπερ ἀπέφηνε τὰ λοιπὰ τῶν ζῷων.

· 3.2.8.3. τὴν γὰρ ἐπιθυμίαν εὔτονον καὶ σφοδροτέραν ἐνεποίησε τοῖς ἄρρεσιν εἰς τὴν τῶν γενῶν παραμονήν, ἥν οὔτε νόμος οὔτε ἔθος οὔτε ἄλλο <τι> τῶν ὄντων ἀφανίσαι δύναται. θεοῦ γάρ ἐστι δόγμα.

Translation

· 3.2.8.1. Accordingly, God made all things in common for humanity, bringing together female to male in common (Gen 1:27; 2:22), and by uniting all animals in the same way, he declared justice to be communality with equality.

· 3.2.8.2. But though these people are born in this way, they have denied both the communality that joins (couples) together and their own birth. By saying, “Let the man who marries one (woman) have her,” (1 Cor 7:2) even though all people can share in common just as he declared for the rest of the animals.

· For he (God) implanted vibrant and rather forceful desire in males for the persistence of human families, a desire which no law, custom, or anything else can destroy, for it is a decree of God.

Excerpt 4: A criticism of the Mosaic law

· 3.2.9.2. ἔνθεν ὡς γελοῖον εἰρηκότος τοῦ νομοθέτου ῥῆμα τοῦτο ἀκουστέον «οὐκ ἐπιθυμήσεις,» πρὸς τὸ γελοιότερον εἰπεῖν «τῶν τοῦ πλησίον»· αὐτὸς γὰρ ὁ τὴν ἐπιθυμίαν δοὺς ὡς συνέχουσαν τὰ τῆς γενέσεως ταύτην ἀφαιρεῖσθαι κελεύει μηδενὸς αὐτὴν ἀφελῶν ζῷου· τὸ δὲ ‘τῆς τοῦ πλησίον γυναικὸς’ ἰδιότητα τὴν κοινωνίαν ἀναγκάζων ἔτι γελοιότερον εἶπεν.

Translation

· 3.2.9.2. Therefore one must understand the legislator speaking this phrase as something comical: “Do not desire.” It is even more comical to say, “your neighbor’s property” (Exod 20:17/Deut 5:21). For the very one (God) who gave desire to sustain reproduction commands that it be removed, though he has not removed it from any animal. And by his phrase, “your neighbor’s wife” (Exod 20:17/Deut 5:21), he forces what is common to become private, and speaks what is still more comical.

The passage in the context of the Stromata

The excerpts of Epiphanes’s On Justice appear in a work by Clement of Alexandria (about 150–215 CE). Clement was a Christian scholar reportedly born in Athens. He was wealthy and traveled much to secure an excellent education, boasting of teachers from Greece, Palestine, and Egypt (Strom. 1.1.11.1). He eventually became a teacher in Alexandria. During persecution there (202–203 CE) Clement fled, resettling in Palestine and perhaps later in Asia Minor (modern Turkey). While still in Alexandria, apparently, he drafted most of his massive work called Stromata (Miscellanies) of Gnostic Notes according to the True Philosophy. This work contains quotes and information about Christian writers in second-century Alexandria—including Basilides, Isidore, Valentinus, Julius Cassianus, Prodicus, and Epiphanes.

Clement’s Stromata is a Christian miscellany designed for the spiritual formation of its readers. It was evidently aimed to be read as part of a three- or four-part sequence of works, in the order of the Protrepticus, Pedagogue, Stromata, and (the lost) Hypotyposeis.⁴ The miscellanistic nature of the Stromata, with its tropes of scholarly lucubration, hiddenness, playfulness, and mystery, is comparable to other ancient miscellanies, such as the Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius, Pliny the Elder’s Natural History, Plutarch’s Table Talk, and the Learned Banqueters of Athenaeus.⁵

A patchwork of many genres and materials, Clement’s Stromata is many things, and that includes heresiology. Heresiology can be defined as a form of writing that polemically represents alternative opinions and practices as illegitimate in an attempt to make insiders seem like outsiders. Readers of Clement’s works will discover that he seems to have developed or at least sharpened his views in dialogue with his (many) Christian opponents in late second-century Alexandria.⁶

Stromata book 3 is no exception in this regard. Here Clement mapped out two ideal types of opponents: the putatively licentious and the ascetic, or, in his own words, “those who teach to live indifferently and those who, adopting too high a pitch, announce self-control through impiety and quarrelsomeness” (Strom. 3.5.40.2).⁷ It is unfortunate that Epiphanes is categorized with those who teach “indifference,” since Epiphanes, judging from his excerpts, did not refer to this concept.⁸ There are scholars who see Carpocratians lurking behind Clement’s other references to Christians who live by indifference.⁹ Yet this methodology is not sufficiently critical. Clement was generalizing against all of his putatively “licentious” opponents when he accused them of indifference (e.g., Strom. 3.5.41.4; 3.8.61.1). Whether they actually taught Cynic or Stoic indifference is another question.

Clement’s imprecision shows how easily his binary categories (ascetic vs. licentious) can mislead. Clement did not accurately represent the position of his opponents, their language, their intellectual context, or their (moral) purpose. His binary categorization, though memorable, was simplifying and polemical.¹⁰ The mapping of “heretics” onto the grid of two ethical extremes allowed Clement to portray his own position as a kind of golden mean. Clement’s caricature of his opponents in Stromata 3 would have long-lasting effects on the history of scholarship.¹¹

In the chapters prior to his binary labeling (Strom. 3.1–4), Clement provided a set of polemical notes regarding his opponents’ views on marriage and sexuality. He began with Valentinian Christians, then turned to Isidore (son of Basilides and a reputed Basilidean), Epiphanes (son of Carpocrates and a reputed Carpocratian), Marcion(ites), the Nicolaitans, Prodican Christians, and a group of Christians labeled “Antitactae.” If Marcion was the paradigm ascetic, for Clement, then Epiphanes, the Nicolaitans, Prodicans, and the Antitactae were instances of “licentiousness.”

Clement’s polemical technique mainly involved the summarizing of his opponents. His summaries are often distorted by the typical polemical techniques of exaggeration, decontextualizing, simplification, and so on. What is different in Clement’s attack on Epiphanes (Strom. 3.2) is that he quoted lengthy excerpts from Epiphanes’s work On Justice. These excerpts enable the reader to check up on Clement’s interpretations, assumptions, and evaluations. To a certain extent, we can distance Epiphanes’s text from Clement’s polemical evaluation and framing of it, even as we use Clement’s information to shed more light on its pre-Clementine context.

What follows is a commentary mainly on the quoted text of Epiphanes, printed in bold. Clement’s polemical evaluation of Epiphanes will be treated in less detail, as our purpose is not to prioritize Clement or his perspective, but rather to exposit the views of Epiphanes in fairness to his own framework and assumptions. My goal, in brief, is to illuminate Epiphanes’s thought, not to judge it by the metrics of Clement’s reception or by any later patristic reception.

References to the translated text (e.g., 3.2.5.1) refer to the Stromata. My translation is intentionally literal. Words translated in parentheses are supplied to fill in the sense of the Greek text. In the Greek text, words in angled brackets (< >) are editorial editions, those in square brackets ([ ]) are deletions, while letters in parentheses ( ) are faded or effaced.

Clement’s introduction to Epiphanes

Text and translation

3.2.5.1. οἱ δὲ ἀπὸ Καρποκράτους καὶ Ἐπιφάνους ἀναγόμενοι κοινὰς εἶναι τὰς γυναῖκας ἀξιοῦσιν, ἐξ ὧν ἡ μεγίστη κατὰ τοῦ ὀνόματος ἐρρύη βλασφημία.

3.2.5.1. Those deriving from Carpocrates and Epiphanes make the claim that wives are common. From them the greatest insult has flowed against the name.

Commentary

According to Clement, it was not Carpocrates and Epiphanes, but their followers, who determined that “wives were common.”¹² Epiphanius and later heresiologists were less careful. They claimed either that Epiphanes or Carpocrates postulated the view of “wives in common” (Pan. 32.4.2).¹³ “Wives in common” is not a phrase that appears, however, in Epiphanes’s quoted text. It represents Clement’s polemical interpretation of Epiphanes’s thought.

It is difficult to know the identity of those “deriving from” Carpocrates and Epiphanes. Ἀναγόμενοι is in the present tense, so apparently, they represent Clement’s contemporaries. We do not know if they formed a coherent group. Clement’s vagueness regarding their names and specific identities was probably deliberate. He was prepared to make Carpocrates and Epiphanes the spiritual ancestors of a large range of people who may or may not have actually identified with the Carpocratian Christian movement. For instance, he included in his anti-Carpocratian polemic a vague group whom he called “competitors in the same vices” (3.2.10.1); as well as “like heresies” (3.2.11.1), which apparently designate other groups in Clement’s “licentious” category (e.g., the “Antitactae”).

Clement would go on to cite only the work of Epiphanes, not Carpocrates. Nevertheless, Epiphanes was linked with Carpocrates not only as father and son, but also as student and teacher. Epiphanes himself was a teacher insofar as he was a writer, but it is unknown whether Epiphanes’s readers had any particular commitment to his ideas. Judging by the surviving content of Epiphanes’s text, his work did not concern the “community of wives” specifically, but justice and equality as it related to property in general.¹⁴ Clement acknowledged this point when he later attacked “Carpocrates” (here standing in for Epiphanes) for his communalistic views (Strom. 3.6.54.1–4).

Γυναῖκας is translated “wives,” not “women,” to bring out the radicality, from Clement’s perspective, of the ascribed position. Clement, we will learn, considered unmarried women to be “common” (i.e., available to any suitor who would seek their hand in marriage). To quote him:

They were common before marriage, with regard to those who would ask them (for marriage) in the future. Just as the theater is common to spectators, each woman is common to each man who asks for her hand ahead of time.

(3.2.10.2)

Reference to “wives in common” also shows that Clement did not attack Epiphanes for undermining the institution of marriage as such, but for fostering a radical view of marriage propounded by his followers. This radical view of marriage was largely associated with Plato’s Republic, and Clement will return to this point below (3.2.10.2).

The charge of holding “wives in common” was not uniquely anti-Carpocratian, but one hurled at Christians in general. According to Theophilus of Antioch (late second century CE):

They [opponents of Christianity] say that all our [Christian] wives are common and live in promiscuity with different men (φασκόντων ὡς κοινὰς ἁπάντων οὔσας τὰς γυναῖκας ἡμῶν καὶ διαφόρῳ μίξει ζῶντας), and still more that we have sex with our own sisters (ἔτι μὴν καὶ ταῖς ἰδίαις ἀδελφαῖς συμμίγνυσθαι).

(Autolycus 3.4)¹⁵

There is probably an allusion to the same charge in the Epistle of Diognetus 5.7: “they [Christians] share their table but not their bed (κοίτην, here an emendation of κοίνην).” Similarly Tertullian, Apol. 39.11 reads: “we [Christians] mix together in mind and soul and don’t hesitate to share something. Everything is common among us except our wives (omnia indiscrete sunt apud nos praeter uxores).”

Were there actual followers of Carpocrates and Epiphanes who determined that “wives were common”? We do not know. In a polemic, however, techniques of exaggeration and simplification are rife. Irenaeus led the way when he claimed that the followers of Carpocrates and Basilides introduced “indifferent couplings and a plurality of marriages” (indifferentes coitus et multas nuptias introduxerunt, AH 1.28.2). This is not the same teaching as “the community of wives,” but Clement was perhaps influenced by the ideas, if not the language, of Irenaeus.¹⁶

Michael Kok, following Thomas Whitley, writes that “Irenaeus (Haer. 1,28,2) and Clement (Str. 3,2,3,2; cf. 3,2,83) independently attested that the Carpocratians shared their spouses among the members of the group.”¹⁷ Whether Clement is fully independent of Irenaeus is in fact an open question. There is, moreover, no evidence that, for Carpocratians, wives were actually “common.” Even if some Carpocratians may have experimented with the idea, they never, as far as we know, implemented it.¹⁸ Carpocrates himself was in a monogamous relationship with a woman named Alexandreia (3.2.5.2). Marcellina, leader of a Carpocratian group in Rome, also did not practice any system in which women or wives were common (Irenaeus, AH 1.25.6).¹⁹ If she made herself “common” to other men, heresiologists would surely have taken notice.

Clement’s chief concern is that “the name”—which could be the name of “Christian,” but is more likely the name of Christ—is insulted (cf. Strom. 3.1.3.4; 3.4.27.1).²⁰ Clement possibly knew from Irenaeus that the Carpocratians putatively insulted the “divine” name of the “church” (AH 1.25.3). The Alexandrian will later wonder how Epiphanes could be enrolled in his own ecclesial “registry” (3.2.8.4). Clement was concerned about the effects of supposedly Carpocratian beliefs—that Christians in general gained a bad reputation from the practices of a smaller group (cf. Rom 2:24; 2 Pet 2:2). His words only make sense if we assume that people, both Christians and non-Christians, viewed Carpocratians as Christians.²¹

Text and translation

3.2.5.2. Ἐπιφάνης οὗτος, οὗ καὶ τὰ συγγράμματα κομίζεται, υἱὸς ἦν Καρποκράτους καὶ μητρὸς Ἀλεξανδρ<ε>ίας τοὔνομα, τὰ μὲν πρὸς πατρὸς Ἀλεξανδρεύς, ἀπὸ δὲ μητρὸς Κεφαλληνεύς, ἔζησε δὲ τὰ πάντα ἔτη ἑπτακαίδεκα.

3.2.5.2. This Epiphanes, whose writings are also transmitted, was the son of Carpocrates and of a mother named Alexandreia. In matters related to his father, he was an Alexandrian, but Cephallenian on his mother’s side. He lived seventeen years in all.

Commentary

“Epiphanes” was the epithet of the fifth Ptolemaic king of Egypt, the more famous Syrian king Antiochus IV, as well as of later Roman emperors (Philo, Against Flaccus 81). The epithet meant “manifest” or “distinguished” and was often spoken of a god whose appearance functioned to save a human group.²² For Epiphanes, the name was prophetic, as we shall see. Clement’s use of the plural συγγράμματα may indicate that he had more writings of Epiphanes than On Justice. It may also indicate that On Justice was an extensive work.

According to Epiphanius—who read Clement’s Stromata in a fourth-century CE manuscript—Epiphanes’s mother was called “Alexandreia,” as opposed to “Alexandria.” Alexandreia is probably the correct spelling of her name.²³ (This spelling clarifies that Alexandreia is not simply a stand-in for the city of Alexandria, as some earlier scholars supposed.)²⁴ Unlike Clement, Epiphanius reported that Carpocrates—not Alexandreia—was from Cephallenia (ἀπὸ Κεφαλληνίας μὲν τὸ πρὸς πατρὸς γένος ὤν, Pan. 32.3). It is possible that Epiphanius simply misread Clement. Perhaps, however, both parents originated in Cephallenia but moved at some point to Alexandria. Whether or not Epiphanes grew up in Alexandria is unknown. Given that he was evidently buried in Cephallenia, the location of his shrine (see below), he may have been raised there.

Figure 1.1 Map of Cephallenia.

Cephallenia is the largest of the Ionian islands west of the Greek mainland in the Adriatic Sea. It is the larger neighbor of Ithaca, famed home of Homer’s Odysseus. In the second century, Cephallenia was part of the Roman empire, in the province of Epirus (Claudius Ptolemy, Geography 3.14.11–12). During the reign of Hadrian, the island was placed under Athenian control (Dio Cassius, Roman History 69.16.2).

Clement may have mentioned Epiphanes’s youth to demean his thought. Sometimes an author’s radicality could be dismissed by the claim that he or she was young or immature (e.g., DL, Vita Phil. 7.4).²⁵ As we shall see, the youth of Epiphanes is important for understanding why he was deified.

Text and translation

καὶ θεὸς ἐν Σάμῃ τῆς Κεφαλληνίας τετίμηται, ἔνθα αὐτῷ ἱερὸν ῥυτῶν λίθων, βωμοί, τεμένη, μουσεῖον ᾠκοδόμηταί τε καὶ καθιέρωται, καὶ συνιόντες εἰς τὸ ἱερὸν οἱ Κεφαλλῆνες κατὰ νουμηνίαν γενέθλιον ἀποθέωσιν θύουσιν Ἐπιφάνει, σπενδουσί τε καὶ εὐωχοῦνται καὶ ὕμνοι λέγονται.

Moreover, he (Epiphanes) is honored as a god in Same of Cephallenia. For him have been built and consecrated a sanctuary of quarried stones, altars, precincts, and a mouseion. The Cephallenians gather in the sanctuary every new moon and sacrifice a birthday deification to Epiphanes. They pour libations, feast, and chant hymns.

Commentary

Same (modern Sami) was a port city of Cephallenia, opposite Ithaca. The Romans attacked and destroyed Same in 189 BCE (Livy, Ab urbe 38.28.5–38.30.1). Still in ruins during the reign of Augustus (Strabo, Geogr. 10.2.13), Clement’s testimony is evidence that the city had been rebuilt, apparently sometime in the first century CE, judging from an inscription dated to the late first or early second century CE.²⁶

Epiphanius called Same “Samos,” an alternative name for the city (Pan. 32.3.6; Strabo, Geogr. 10.2.13, 17). He also indicated that Epiphanes was worshiped καὶ εἰς δεῦρο (Pan. 32.3.6), which could mean “even as far as here” or “even up until this time.” Probably the latter meaning is intended because there is no evidence of a cult transfer from Cephallenia to Cyprus (the location of Epiphanius). The tradition that “Barnabas” condemned the Carpocratians on Cyprus (Praedestinatus, Haer. 7) is late and suspect.²⁷ Still, the report that Epiphanes was worshiped on Cephallenia up until the late fourth century might actually be true. Perhaps Carpocrates and Alexandreia decided to deify their son on Same because this was the place of their family estate. Estates were common places for aristocrats to memorialize and pay cult to their dead children, as we shall see in the case of Tullia below.

The account of Epiphanes’s deification is so extraordinary that some scholars have wondered whether Clement made an error. Was there, for instance, a god on the island of Cephallenia with the epithet “Epiphanes,” with whom Epiphanes, son of Carpocrates, was posthumously identified?²⁸ There was a famous mistake made by Justin Martyr in regard to Simon of Samaria. In his First Apology, Justin wrote that the devotees of Simon in Rome worshiped a statue on Tiber island with the inscription: SIMONI DEO SANCTO: “To Simon, Sacred God” (1 Apol. 26.2). When the inscription was found in 1574, it read SEMONI SANCO DEO FIDIO (“To Semo Sancus, faithful God”).²⁹ The inscription indicates that the statue did not—for the Romans at least—depict Simon, but a native Italic deity associated with oaths, the sky, and lightning.³⁰

For his part, Clement certainly believed that Epiphanes, son of Carpocrates, was a real person and the real honoree on Cephallenia. Despite our lack of confirming archeological evidence, there was and remains no sufficient reason to discredit Clement on these points.³¹ Presumably, Clement would not have invented this information and we have no reason to suspect that it was invented before him. The worship of Epiphanes was local, performed by “Cephallenians.” We cannot assume this meant everyone on the island. It may have meant no more than the extended family of Carpocrates and Alexandreia.

The mouseion—literally a shrine of the Muses (the nine divine patronesses of Greek learning)—was evidently a study space for scholars. It may have contained a library, and possibly a classroom or lecture hall. Epiphanius added—on what basis we do not know—that the mouseion bore the “celebrated name” of Epiphanes (μουσεῖον εἰς ὄνομα αὐτοῦ περίπυστον ἀνεστήσαντο, τὸ δὴ Ἐπιφάνους μουσεῖον καλούμενον, Pan. 32.3.6). According to legend, the people of Metapontum in Italy made the laneway outside Pythagoras’s house a mouseion (Iamblichus, Pythagorean Way of Life 170–1; cf. 45, 50). Reportedly, they also made the entranceway of the house of Pythagoras’s daughter Myia a mouseion.³² An inscription found on the island of Thera (dated 210–195 BCE) records that a husband and wife built a mouseion in response to the death of their son. An annual sacrifice was offered and a banquet held there in honor of dead family members, presumably for several generations.³³

Clement literally wrote that the Cephallenians “sacrifice a birthday deification (γενέθλιον ἀποθέωσιν) to Epiphanes.” The expression is somewhat unclear.³⁴ John Ferguson translated: “The inhabitants of Cephallenia … offer sacrifice to Epiphanes to celebrate his apotheosis as if it were his birthday.”³⁵ This is a reasonable attempt at a paraphrase. My own sense, however, is that the ἀποθέωσιν was a particular kind of sacrifice that indicated Epiphanes’s divine status in the eyes of his worshipers.

Did Epiphanes’s parents intend to deify their son (as indicated by θεός … τετίμηται … ἀποθέωσιν)? Practices of heroization and deification might seem similar from a modern vantage point, but the ancients could well distinguish a hero from a god. The extraordinary outlay of Epiphanes’s parents—“a sanctuary of quarried (or hauled)³⁶ stones, altars, precincts, and a mouseion”—indicates something more than just heroization.

Ancient Greeks and Romans distinguished sacrifices to gods, heroes, and lesser divinities (daimones). Heroes received sacrifices on hearths hollowed out in the ground (ἐσχάρα). Gods were given raised altars (βωμοί). The βωμοί and temple consecrated to Epiphanes show that he was viewed as a god, similar to Roman emperors. Yet even in the case of Roman emperors, who were called gods (θεοί) in cults, small modifications of language and ritual clarified their position subordinate to traditional gods like Zeus, Hera, and Demeter. For example, most imperial sacrifices were not made “to” the emperor but “on his behalf.”³⁷ We do not know if any like modifications were made in the case of Epiphanes. Nothing specific is said about the sacrifice(s) or other rituals performed for him, only the fact that hymns were sung. Reportedly, the “Athenians” also sang a hymn for Plato on his birthday, which was celebrated by Platonists as late as the Platonist Proclus (412–485 CE).³⁸

It is interesting that Epiphanes’s “birthday deification” took place 12 times a year on the new moon (which may indicate the use of a lunar calendar). There was a precedent for monthly birthday celebrations of Hellenistic and Roman rulers.³⁹ We can cite, for instance, the final section of the Rosetta decree in Greek, issued in the fourteenth year of Ptolemy V Epiphanes, or 196 BCE:

On the 30th of Mesore, in the month in which the birthday of the king is celebrated, and similarly on [the seventeenth of Phaophi], in which the king received the kingship from his father and was named with epithets in the sanctuaries—months which are surely the springs of many benefits for all people—it is decreed that these days be celebrated with festivals and processions in sanctuaries throughout Egypt on a monthly basis (κατὰ μῆνα) and to perform in them sacrifices, libations, and the other rites. Just as in the other processions, dedi[cations ] originate [for those …] attending the sanctuaries. And it is decreed that a festival and procession be held for the long-lived beloved of Ptah, king Ptolemy, the Manifest God (θεῶι Ἐπιφανεῖ), Bestower of Gifts, yea[rly in the sanctuaries in each] region from the new moon of Thoth, for five days in which they will wear crowns as they perform rites, libations and the other due offerings. It is decreed that [the priests of the other gods be addre]ssed also as priests of the Manifest God (τοῦ θεοῦ Ἐπιφανοῦς) the Bestower of Gifts, … It is decreed that they go out with the other common people to celebrate the festival and that they establish the aforementioned shrines, and have among themselves as they perfo[rm the rites in the festivals—those monthly and] yearly—so that it be known why those in Egypt magnify and worship the Manifest God (θεὸν Ἐπιφανῆ).⁴⁰

The Rosetta decree distinguishes monthly and yearly rites for Ptolemy V. The yearly rites occur on the new moon of Thoth, the first month in the Egyptian civil calendar. The monthly rites occur on Ptolemy V’s birthday, here said to be the last day of the calendar, the thirtieth of Mesore. The two days were not far apart, as the first and final day of the year, respectively (though separated by intercalary days).

The decree is helpful because it shows what a monthly “birthday deification” looked like for a Hellenistic king, ruling from the same city in which Carpocrates—and likely Epiphanes—later lived. Every month in celebration of his birthday, processions, sacrifices, libations, and other rites were performed for Ptolemy V, rites which exemplified him as a “Manifest God”—θεός Ἐπιφανƞˊς. In 41 CE, an Alexandrian embassy asked to celebrate the birthday of the emperor Claudius every month (CPJ 2 §153.29–31). Claudius granted the request, though we do not know what rites were performed for Claudius.⁴¹ If similar rites were held on a smaller scale for Epiphanes, son of Carpocrates, they may have been modeled on what was common for Hellenistic and Roman rulers.

Herein lies the peculiar aspect of Epiphanes’s deification. It was common in the Greco-Roman world at this time to pay some sort of cult to the dead—in particular for aristocratic families who could afford memorializing heirs who perished in their youth.⁴² Yet the deification of Epiphanes was—or was at least portrayed as—lavish, and in other ways was most analogous to the deification of royal figures and favorites.

Perhaps the most obvious comparandum here is Antinous, teenage favorite of the emperor Hadrian. When Antinous drowned in the River Nile, he was deified in 130 CE. Shrines, statues, rites, and games in his honor were set up in major cities across the Mediterranean world. A whole city—called Antinoöpolis—was established in Antinous’s honor within Egypt.⁴³

An analogy for smaller-scale rites for a family member is provided by Cicero. Cicero’s daughter Tullia died in February, 45 BCE. In response, Cicero sought to build his daughter a shrine or temple (fanum) (Att. 259.1 [12.25.1]; 274 [12.35]).⁴⁴ Cicero intended to “consecrate” his daughter (illam consecrabo) (Att. 254.1 [12.18.1])—a technical term for deification. Cicero said that the shrine would indicate Tullia’s ἀποθέωσις (Att. 259.1 [12.12.1]; 275 [12.36.1]), the same word used for Epiphanes. Tullia’s shrine was substantial, at least its blueprint. Cicero planned to import marble pillars from the island of Chios (Att. 310.6 [13.6.1–3]). He wanted the shrine to be in a visible place, on open land, in order to ensure not only the greatest recognition, but also the greatest acceptance of Tullia’s divinity (275.1 [12.36.1]; 261.3 [12.22.3]; 262.3 [12.23.3]).⁴⁵

Key here is Cicero’s motivation for deifying his daughter, which helps to throw light on the rationale for Epiphanes’s deification. Cicero was emotionally tied to his daughter, like any good father, but grief was not the sole factor determining his desire. In his lost Consolation—written shortly after Tullia’s death—Cicero wrote,

If it was right for the offspring of Cadmus [namely, Dionysus] or Amphitryon [Hercules] or Tyndareus [the Dioscuri] to be raised to heaven by fame, the same honor should certainly be dedicated to her [Tullia]; and indeed this I will do and I will deify you (teque … consecrabo), the best and most learned of all women (te omnium optimam doctissimam), with the immortal gods themselves assenting.⁴⁶

In another fragment, Cicero observed that there are sages who say that the souls of good and evil people take different paths after death. Pure and uncorrupted souls have been “smoothly polished by noble studies and arts” (bonis etiam studiis atque artibus expolitos). These souls “fly with a light and easy glide to the gods, that is, to a nature similar to their own” (frag. 22 [Vitelli] from Lactantius, Inst. 3.19.3–6). For Cicero, it was Tullia’s learning and refinement that, at least in part, earned her a place in the registry of the gods.

Similarly, Epiphanius remarked that Epiphanes was deified “on account of his superordinate learning, both encyclical and Platonic” (δι’ ὑπερβολὴν δὲ τῆς ἐκείνου παιδείας, ἐγκυκλίου τε καὶ Πλατωνικῆς) (Pan. 32.3.8). This was an inference on Epiphanius’s part (the causal δι’ is not in Clement, Strom. 3.2.5.3), but a good inference nonetheless. It was not strength of body that proved the quality of Epiphanes’s soul. He did not defeat monsters like Hercules; nor did he bestow upon the human race wine like the god Dionysus or grain like Demeter. The gift of Epiphanes was his wisdom. His strength lay in his mind. To be sure, it was in part familial affection that led Carpocrates and Alexandreia to deify their son—as was common. But it was also something they saw in Epiphanes—a wisdom that hinted at the soul’s preexistence. How else could such profound wisdom come to roost in a body so young? The sheer speed of his learning proved that he had lived a previous life; now Epiphanes transcended biological life altogether.⁴⁷

It would be interesting to know if the worshipers of Epiphanes expected any divine benefit from him. Was Epiphanes the kind of entity that could hear the prayers and hymns of those who honored him? It is certainly possible. And if Epiphanes became this sort of entity for Carpocratians, how much more important was the Carpocratian Jesus? (See the commentary in Chapter 2 on Irenaeus, AH 1.25.1, 6).

What was Clement’s source for Epiphanes’s deification? Despite the fact that Clement was well traveled, it seems unlikely that he knew of Epiphanes’s shrine from personal autopsy. He probably used a source, but we do not know what it was, whether it was oral or written, or who transmitted it. Was it some sort of preface to Epiphanes’s On Justice that was published posthumously? One does not have the sense that the source was hostile to Epiphanes. Not even Clement let fly a critical comment, although he expressed hostility to deification elsewhere (against Alexander the Great [Prot. 10.96.4] and Antinous [Prot. 4.49.1]). It should be noted, however, Clement only used ἀποθέωσις for deifications of which he disapproved (Strom. 1.21.105.1; 1.21.105.3; 1.21.137.3).⁴⁸

Regarding Epiphanes’s deification, Pétrement claimed that it shows Carpocrates’s “great tolerance for pagan religious rites.”⁴⁹ This view is problematic, and not simply because it reinscribes a heresiological point of view. If Carpocrates was a Christian—as Pétrement admitted—then he would not have perceived his own rites as “pagan.” In an endnote, Pétrement stated that “Clement does not indicate whether this cult [of Epiphanes] was approved by Carpocrates.”⁵⁰ But if it was not approved by Carpocrates, who was it that funded and organized it?

It is not the scholar’s place to judge Epiphanes’s deification as unchristian.⁵¹ It is pointless, moreover, to judge it by anachronistic standards of later orthodox Christian deification. The point is to understand Epiphanes’s deification in its own second-century Carpocratian context. The deified Epiphanes received extraordinary honors to be sure, but Carpocrates and Alexandreia showed no indication of renouncing their Christian commitments when honoring their son. Arguably, deification has always been part and parcel of the Christian tradition, after the model of the first man deified by Christians, Jesus himself.⁵²

Text and translation

3.2.5.3. ἐπαιδεύθη μὲν οὖν παρὰ τῷ πατρὶ τήν τε ἐγκύκλιον παιδείαν καὶ τὰ Πλάτωνος, καθηγήσατο δὲ τῆς μοναδικῆς γνώσεως, ἀφ’ οὗ καὶ ἡ τῶν Καρποκρατιανῶν αἵρεσις.

3.2.5.3. He (Epiphanes) was educated by his father in both encyclical and Platonic education. He taught (or: established) the way of monadic gnosis, from which came the Carpocratian heresy.

Commentary

Here I take the subject of καθηγήσατο to be Carpocrates, although it could well be Epiphanes. If so, Epiphanes could be the founder of monadic gnosis from which the Carpocratian sect derived.⁵³ If so, Epiphanes would still not necessarily be the founder of the Carpocratian movement.⁵⁴ After all, Epiphanes was taught by Carpocrates in the preparatory disciplines. I think it reasonable that Epiphanes was also taught “monadic gnosis” by his father Carpocrates, which I take to refer to theological monism (more on this in the following paragraphs).

In the ancient world, encyclical education typically included the study of grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, geometry, arithmetic, musical theory, and astronomy (Quintilian, Inst. Or. 1.10.1–26). The aim of encyclical studies was not only to inform the intellect but to shape a person’s character. Plato and his heirs saw encyclical education as preparatory for philosophy (Plato, Resp. 525d–31e; cf. Alcinous, Didasc. 7.1–4; Clement, Strom. 1.19.93.5). Plato put particular emphasis on mathematical subjects, which trained the mind to think abstractly about permanent and unchanging realities. We might hypothesize that Carpocrates took up Plato’s program in his philosophical formation of Epiphanes, though Clement offered no details.⁵⁵

The philosophy that Carpocrates taught his son was presumably a form of Middle Platonism, the system which, by the late second century CE, came to be viewed as most compatible with Christianity. Middle Platonists acknowledged a providential creator deity, even if this deity was typically viewed as different than the supreme Principle or deity (the Good). They typically claimed that the world was generated from a single divine principle, though not necessarily in time. Platonists taught the immortality of the soul, the management of negative emotions, and that the soul became good by becoming like God.⁵⁶

“Monadic gnosis” seems to be a circumlocution for (Neo-)Pythagorean metaphysics, which was often coupled with Platonism in this period. Pythagoreans, according to Clement, posited divine unity (ὁ μὲν θεὸς εἷς, Protr. 6.72.4), or a monad (DL, Vita Phil. 8.25; Sextus Empiricus, Math. 261–2; Aetius, Placita 1.2 §7; 1.7 §9, §22).⁵⁷ Eudorus of Alexandria, a first-century CE Platonist, proposed a single first principle (called the One), who transcended two binary principles, the Monad and the Indefinite Dyad.⁵⁸ The Supreme principle was also called the Supreme God and was seen as the cause of matter.⁵⁹ Valentinians had various theories of how reality emerged from a Monad or from a principle superior to the Monad (Irenaeus, AH 1.11.3; Ref. 6.29.2; AAH 4.8).⁶⁰ Clement referred to God (or the Logos) as a “monad” (Protr. 9.88.3) but elsewhere—like Philo (Heir 183)—said that God is “above the monad” (Paed. 1.8.71.1).

In Stromata 3.4.29.2, Clement related an aeonology from an “apocryphal text” which he seems to have associated with Carpocratians:

All things were one (ἕν). When, however, the One resolved not to be alone (μόνῃ), a Conception went out from him. He became intimate (ἐκοινώνησεν) with her and made the Beloved. From the Beloved came forth a Conception. When he [the Beloved] was intimate with her, he made Powers unable to be seen or heard … each with its own name.

If this account really was Carpocratian—a point unclear in context—it explains how Carpocratians could both be monist and believe in multiple powers as emerging from the One. On the other hand, it is such a streamlined aeonology, it might belong to any number of Christian groups.

Why Clement connected Epiphanes specifically to “monadic gnosis” is not clear. Nothing in the quoted text of On Justice suggests Pythagorean metaphysics. Perhaps Clement made the same inference as Epiphanius (Pan. 32.5.1), who identified the ἐπιφανὴς διδάσκαλος in Irenaeus, AH 1.11.3 (cf. Ref. 6.38.2) with the Carpocratian Epiphanes. The ἐπιφανὴς διδάσκαλος of Irenaeus identified the highest deity with μονότης, who with ἑνότης brought forth μόνας. These might have been taken by Clement as Pythagorean technical terms, allowing the inference that ἐπιφανὴς διδάσκαλος (= Epiphanes son of Carpocrates) was himself part of the Pythagorean school of thought.

Whatever the background of Clement’s comment on monadic gnosis, his purpose was probably to indicate that Carpocratian Christianity emerged from Pythagorean philosophy as opposed to apostolic (= scriptural) teaching (cf. Philo, Leg. All. 2.3).⁶¹ Close analysis of Epiphanes’s text, however, reveals considerable, if subtle, engagement with scripture, along with influence from multiple philosophical schools.

Epiphanes excerpt 1: justice as equal sharing, a law both cosmic and divine

Text and translation

3.2.6.1. Λέγει τοίνυν οὗτος ἐν τῷ Περὶ Δικαιοσύνης τὴν δικαιοσύνην τοῦ θεοῦ κοινωνίαν τινὰ εἶναι μετ’ ἰσότητος.

3.2.6.1. This fellow says in his On Justice that the justice of God is a certain communality joined with equality.

Commentary

So begins Clement’s longest citation of an opponent’s work in Strom. 3, considerably longer than his citation of Isidore’s Ethics in Strom. 3.1.2–3. Clement’s effort to copy out lengthy quotes indicates that Epiphanes served as an important witness regarding the “libertinism” of his opponents. As pointed out by Annewies van den Hoek, Clement tended to be more scrupulous in quotes from his opponents as opposed to his allies, often naming their works.⁶² Such is the case here.

Justice was one of the four cardinal virtues (Clement, Paed. 2.12.121.4), sometimes said to be “the very culmination of all the virtues and the summation of all of them in which … they are all present together” (Iamblichus, Letter 2 To Anatolius, frag. 1, trans. Dillon and Polleichtner).⁶³ It was a virtue shared by humans and God. By adding the “justice of God” (τὴν δικαιοσύνην τοῦ θεοῦ, cf. Rom 3:21–6) Epiphanes emphasized divine and true justice apart from merely human juridical concepts and customs.

A key term in Epiphanes’s definition of justice is κοινωνία. This word and its cognates (κοινωνικός, κοινός) are used some 20 times by Epiphanes in his excerpts (amounting to some 520 words).⁶⁴ The definition as a whole (κοινωνίαν τινὰ … μετ’ ἰσότητος) reflects previous Platonic, Peripatetic, Stoic, and Pythagorean definitions.

For instance, the Pseudo-Platonic Definitions 411e (probably late fourth century BCE) defined justice in terms of equality, specifically social equality or equity (ἰσότης κοινωνική). Aristotle observed that “everybody thinks that justice is a certain equality” (δοκεῖ δὲ πᾶσιν ἴσον τι τὸ δίκαιον εἶναι) (Pol. 3.12, 1282b18). He called “the just” “equal” (τὸ δίκαιόν ἐστι τὸ ἴσον, Eth. Nic. 5.1, 1129a34), and defined justice (δικαιοσύνη) as “a condition of equality productive of or distributing equality” (ἕξις ἰσότητος ποιητικὴ ἤ διανεμητικὴ τοῦ ἴσου, Top. 6.5, 143a16).

The Stoic Chrysippus (279–206 BCE) classed “sharing in common” (εὐκοινωνησία) as a sub-virtue of justice (δικαιοσύνη), and defined εὐκοινωνησία as “the knowledge of equality in [or: by means of] communality” (ἐπιστημήν ἰσότητος ἐν κοινωνίᾳ) (SVF 3.264.42 = Arius Didymus, Epitome of Stoic Ethics 16.15–16).⁶⁵ Equality, he said, always follows justice (DL, Vita Phil. 7.126).⁶⁶

The Pythagorean known as Pseudo-Ecphantus (first century BCE to second century CE), wrote

that he [the king] who is just (δίκαιος) will be communal (κοινωνικός) is clear to all, for communality consists in equality (ἰσότατι γὰρ ἁ κοινωνία), and in the distribution of these things, justice (δικαιοσύνα) takes the lead, while communality plays its part, for it is not possible for us to be unjust (ἄδικον) when we distribute a share of equality (ἰσότατος), and we cannot distribute equality (ἰσότατος) if we are not communal (κοινωνικόν).

(Stobaeus, Anthology 4.7.66)⁶⁷

Philo synthesized previous streams of tradition on justice as equality. In his mini-treatise on ἰσότης (Her. 141–206), Philo called equality the special quality of justice (δικαιοσύνην, ἧς ἴδιον, §161), and the nourisher of justice (ἰσότης δικαιοσύνης τροφός, §163, cf. Leg. All. 85, ἰσότης πηγὴ διακαιοσύνης). He said that equality gave birth to justice (ἰσότης διακαιοσύνην … ἔτεκεν, Plant. 122), and was the mother of justice (Spec. leg. 4.231).⁶⁸

For his part, Clement agreed that certain things—such as the bathhouse (τὸ βαλανεῖον)—ought to be common (κοινὸν ἐπ’ ἴσης, Paed. 3.9.47.3). He also believed that God created the human family for communality (ἐπὶ κοινωνίᾳ) and made all things for all people (πάντα ποιήσας ὑπὲρ πάντων, Paed. 2.12.120.3). He ascribed “equality and communality” (ἰσότης δὲ καὶ κοινωνία) to the “just and human-loving God” (δικαίου καὶ φιλανθρώπου θεοῦ) (Paed. 1.6.30.2; cf. Strom. 6.6.47.4), and indicated that justice itself has a communal aspect (τὸ κοινωνικὸν τῆς διακαιοσύνης, Strom. 4.6.33.6).⁶⁹

Nevertheless, Clement tended to interpret Carpocratian κοινωνία in a negative and sexualized way.⁷⁰ In Strom 3.4.27.3, Clement related a rumor regarding “one of them” (τινα αὐτῶν) who quoted Luke 6:30 (“give to the one who asks”) to an attractive young woman of Clement’s church. Clement did not specify who “one of them” was. In context, Clement had most recently discussed Nicolaus, mythical founder of the “Nicolaitans.” One might suppose that the man who quoted Luke 6:30 was a “Nicolaitan.”⁷¹

It seems more likely, however, that Clement referred to a Carpocratian. There are several reasons for this. Clement began Strom. 3.4.27 criticizing the use of κοινωνία in reference to sex (3.4.27.2, picking up the discourse from 3.4.25.5). He then referred to the larger group as οἱ τῆς ἀσελγείας κοινωνοί (3.4.27.4) and accused them of “speaking like a hierophant of fleshly and sexual communion” (τὴν σαρκικὴν καὶ συνουσιαστικὴν κοινωνίαν ἱεροφαντοῦσι, 3.4.27.5). In these cases, κοινωνία was a term Clement took from Epiphanes and adapted for his own purposes, making it his codeword for the putative licentiousness of Carpocratians. In 3.2.10.1, Clement claimed that Carpocratians “have sex however they please, with whatever women they want, taking great care of κοινωνία in this sort of love feast.” He added that “Carpocrates should have legislated for the lasciviousness of dogs, pigs, and goats.” In 3.4.28.1, Clement observed, “It is to the brothels that that sort of κοινωνία leads. Pigs and goats should be their companions” (trans. Ferguson). Clement called the κοινωνία of Epiphanes—conflated with that of Carpocrates—ἀκόλαστον (3.6.54.1). In this passage, Clement returned to the saying “give to the one who asks,” attempting to correct his opponent(s). All this evidence indicates that, when Clement thought of the man who used Luke 6:30, he had Carpocratians in mind.

To be sure, the fact that Clement associated the citer of Luke 6:30 with the Carpocratians does not mean that Clement was accurate. The man who used a scriptural “pick-up line” may or may not have been real. We do not know where or how the rumor about him began. If he was real, he may or may not have actually been a follower of Carpocrates. If he was Carpocratian, he may have been a renegade, not a representative, of the movement.

Despite all this, I suspect that Clement was willing to have this rumor influence his judgment about Epiphanes’s concept of κοινωνία. We know, at any rate, that Clement interpreted Epiphanes’s concept of κοινωνία in a sexualized way (Strom. 3.5.25.5). This reading was not completely wrong, since Epiphanes’s concept of κοινωνία did, as we shall see, have implications for sex. Nevertheless, “free love” or promiscuity was by no means the primary meaning of κοινωνία for Epiphanes. It was a much broader concept—involving, as it did, the nullification of private property and a broader system of sharing goods.

Epiphanes was prepared to go well beyond the common proverb “all things are common for friends” (κοινὰ τὰ φιλῶν)— attributed to Pythagoras (DL, Vita Phil. 8.10) and commonly repeated (e.g., Plato, Resp. 4.424a; Cicero, Off. 1.16.51; Philo, Abr. 235; DL, Vita Phil. 6.37, 71). For Epiphanes everything is common for everyone regardless of whether they are friends or not.

A possible background for Epiphanes’s ideas is the book of Acts 2:42, 44; 4:32: “They [early Christians] persevered in the teaching of the apostles and in communality (τῇ κοινωνίᾳ), in the breaking of bread and in prayers … All those who believed were together and held everything in common (εἶχον ἅπαντα κοινά). Not one of them was saying that one of their possessions was private property, but for them, everything was common” (οὐδὲ εἷς τι τῶν ὑπαρχόντων αὐτῷ ἔλεγεν ἴδιον εἶναι ἀλλ ̓ ἦν αὐτοῖς ἅπαντα κοινά).

Much research has been done to show how the author of Acts tapped into Jewish and Greek utopian ideas of common ownership.⁷² Some argue that the earliest Christian community did share property.⁷³ Possible evidence for this is found in the Didache 4.8:

You shall not turn away anyone who is in need; on the contrary, you shall hold everything in common with your brother, and you shall not say that anything belongs to you (οὐκ ἐρεῖς ἴδια εἶναι), for if you are partners (κοινωνοί) in what is immortal, [should you not be so] all the more in things that perish?

Epiphanes may even have been familiar with the Sentences of Sextus §228: “It is impious for those who have God in common as a father not to hold their possessions in common” (ὧν κοινός ὁ θεός καὶ ταῦτα ὡς πατήρ, τοῦτων μὴ κοινὰ εἶναι τὰ κτήματα οὐκ εὐσεβές). One can also compare sentence 296: “Nothing is good that is unshared” (ἀκοινωνήτον).⁷⁴

A quote from Justin Martyr is also relevant: “Now what we [Christians] have, we make common (εἰς κοινὸν φέροντες) and share in common with every person in need” (παντὶ δεομένῳ κοινωνοῦντες)” (1 Apol. 14.2).

The historicity question (did Christian share in common?) is perhaps less important than the scriptural ideal of the common life in later Christian communities. The communal ideal of owning nothing and sharing everything—even if it was never consistently or fully realized among early Christian groups—was woven into the fabric of the Christian imagination. Sacralized in what became Christian scripture (the book of Acts), it could have logically become the ideal for the young Christian Epiphanes.

Text and translation

«ἴσος γέ τοι πανταχόθεν ἐκταθεὶς οὐρανὸς κύκλῳ τὴν γῆν περιέχει πᾶσαν, καὶ πάντας ἡ νὺξ ἐπ’ ἴσης ἐπιδείκνυται τοὺς ἀστέρας, τόν τε τῆς ἡμέρας αἴτιον καὶ πατέρα τοῦ φωτὸς ἥλιον ὁ θεὸς ἐξέχεεν ἄνωθεν ἴσον ἐπὶ γῆς ἅπασι τοῖς βλέπειν δυναμένοις, οἵ δὲ κοινῇ πάντες βλέπουσιν, 3.2.6.2. ἐπεὶ μὴ διακρίνει πλούσιον ἤ πένητα, δῆμον ἤ ἄρχοντα, ἄφρονάς τε καὶ τοὺς φρονοῦντας, θηλείας ἄρσενας, ἐλευθέρους δούλους. ἀλλ’ οὐδὲ τῶν ἀλόγων παρὰ τοῦτο ποιεῖται τι, πᾶσι δὲ ἐπ’ ἴσης τοῖς ζῷοις κοινὸν αὐτὸν ἐκχέας ἄνωθεν. ἀγαθοῖς τε καὶ φαύλοις τὴν δικαιοσύνην ἐμπεδοῖ μηδενὸς δυναμένου πλεῖον ἔχειν, μηδὲ ἀφαιρεῖσθαι τὸν πλησίον, ἵν’ αὐτὸς κἀκείνου τὸ φῶς διπλασίασας ἔχῃ.

Heaven, surely, is equally spread out on every side and encompasses the earth in a circle. Night, moreover, equally manifests all the stars. God has poured out the sun from above upon earth equally as cause of the day and father of the light for all who can see. And all see in common, 3.2.6.2. since he (God) does not discriminate a rich person from a poor one, a citizen from a ruler, fools from sages, females, males, free people, slaves (Gal 3:28; Col 3:11). Not even in the case of non-reasoning animals does anything count against this point. He (God) has equally he has poured out (the sun) from above as common to all animals. He confirms his justice for good and evil people; none are able to have more or deprive their neighbor so that one has twice the light of another.

Commentary

Epiphanes employed the adverbial phrase ἐπ’ ἴσης (“equally”) here for the first time. He will use it five more times for a total of six occurrences in the course of some 520 words. (For comparison, Clement used ἐπ’ ἴσης 24 times in the entire eight books of his Stromata.)

To illustrate his notion of equality, Epiphanes appealed to natural phenomena, primarily celestial (the stars, the sun) as well as to animals (cf. Plato, Gorgias 508a). By imagining the sky as spread around the earth in a circle, Epiphanes assumed, with most of his contemporaries, that the earth was spherical and central in the universe (cf. Plato, Phaedo 109a). In his comment on the stars, Epiphanes did not claim that every star is equally bright,⁷⁵ but that on every (presumably clear) night, people have equal access, by virtue of sight, to the stars. It is eyesight, Epiphanes underscored, that makes sun and stars commonly available (cf. Clement, Paed. 1.4.10.2).

One is tempted to posit inspiration from a biblical text, specifically Psalm 49:6 (LXX): “The heavens proclaim his (God’s) justice” (καὶ ἀναγγελοῦσιν οἱ οὐρανοὶ τὴν δικαιοσύνην αὐτοῦ). Epiphanes probably also adapted ideas that were considered common coin in the Greco-Roman world. A first or second-century CE novelist portrayed a character as musing, “But are not all the finest works of nature common property? The sun shines upon all (sol lucet omnibus). The moon with countless troops of stars in her train leads even the beasts to their food” (Satyricon 100.3, trans. Michael Heseltine). Tatian, in his philosophical diatribe against Greek culture, wrote, “I see the sun as the same for everyone” (τὸν ἥλιον ὅρω πάντων τὸν αὐτόν, Or. 11.1).

Epiphanes’s choice of the sun to illustrate justice was not careless. The Sun or Helios, called Panoptes (“all-observer”), was well known in ancient Greek lore.⁷⁶ He “observes all and hears all” according to Homer (Od. 11.109). When, for instance, Demeter sought information on the abduction of her daughter, it was Helios who informed her (Homeric Hymns 2.75). In inscriptions, Helios was invoked as a “protector against grave robbers or as avenger of misdeeds.”⁷⁷ He was the protector—or at least enabler—of justice. In the book of Malachi, the name of God is likened to the “sun of justice” (ἥλιος δικαιοσύνης, Mal 3:20 LXX, cited by Clement, Protr. 11.114.3), and Philo named justice the intelligible sun (Special Laws 4.232–6; cf. Heir 146–60).

The subject of the sentence (πᾶσι δἐ ἐπ’ ἴσης τοῖς ζῷοις κοινὸν αὐτὸν ἐκχέας ἄνωθεν) is ambiguous. It may be God or the sun. The allusion to Jesus’s saying in Matthew 5:45 tips the scale in favor of God: “He [your Father in the heavens] makes his sun to rise on evil and good people.” Nonetheless, the activity of God and the sun, according to Epiphanes, were closely aligned.

Epiphanes called the sun “cause of the day (τόν τε τῆς ἡμέρας αἴτιον) and father of the light” (πατέρα τοῦ φωτὸς, cf. φωτὸς γεννήτορα, PGM 4.960). This is not the same as saying, with the Stoic Cleanthes, that the sun is the ἡγεμονικόν (governing element) of the universe (Eusebius, Praep. Ev. 15.15.7; cf. DL, Vita Phil. 7.139), otherwise known as the “mind of the universe” (mens mundi, Cicero, Resp. 6.17), or creator.⁷⁸ For Epiphanes, God is the creator, and God is the creator of the sun (cf. Clement, Protr. 4.63.2).⁷⁹ Epiphanes was closer to Pseudo-Heraclitus, who depicted God as the equalizer of cosmic imbalance, by bestowing commands upon the sun (θεόν, ὅς κόσμου ἀμετρίας ἐπανισοῖ ἡλίῳ ἐπιτάττων) (Ep. 5.7).⁸⁰

Based on what we can observe, the God of Epiphanes was primarily a good and just creator of a good and just cosmos. His God is specifically the creator of astral phenomena, astral phenomena which are in no way viewed as evil or causes of evil. If anticosmism is characteristic of a “Gnostic” mentality (as in the theory of Hans Jonas),⁸¹ then Epiphanes contradicted the Gnostic Geist in a major way. It is, accordingly, unhelpful to class Epiphanes among the “gnostics” or “Gnostic Carpocratians.”⁸²

The examples from the natural world indicate that Epiphanes was working with a quantitative or arithmetical concept of equality. Equality, according to Epiphanes, meant an equal measure of something (sunlight, in his own example) distributed to all sentient beings, regardless of their social, economic, legal, or educational status.

In preferring arithmetical equality, Epiphanes did not follow Plato. Indeed, Plato argued against arithmetical equality, as did many aristocratic philosophers and orators (e.g., Resp. 8.558c; Leg. 6.757a–e; Aristotle, Eth. Nic. 8.7.8, 1158b30–3; Isocrates, Areopagiticus, 21–22; Plutarch, Quaest. conv. 8.2.1–2 [Mor. 719b]). These elite writers did not wish noble and educated persons to receive the same share of goods as did slaves, women, and uneducated persons.⁸³ For them, equality meant “geometric” equality or proportionality, according to which people received a greater portion of goods based on their perceived social and moral worth.

The concept of geometric justice had, by the second century CE, become common coin (Rhetoric to Herennius 3.2.3). Clement, for his part, seems to have assumed it without question. He defined justice as “a disposition to distribute to each according to merit” (τοῦ κατ’ ἀξίαν ἑκάστῳ ἐστὶν ἀπονεμητική, Paed. 1.8.64.1). And later: “the just (δίκαιος) … is a category measured out in accordance with the equality of value” (ἰσότητι μεμετρημένον ὄνομα δυνάμεως, Paed. 1.8.71.3). God himself “dispenses all things to all according to merit (ὁ θεὸς γὰρ πάντα πᾶσι μερίζει κατ’ ἀξίαν), since his ordering is just (δικαίας οὔσης τῆς οἰκονομίας)” (Strom. 4.6.29.1).

Epiphanes—perhaps following Paul (2 Cor 8:13–14)—subverted this aristocratic mindset and portrayed a vision of equality for all. Paul proposed a loss of differentiation between slave and free, male and female based on baptismal unity in Christ (Gal 3:28). Although Epiphanes recalled the language of Gal 3:28 (“no slave and free, male and female”) and Col 3:11 (“no slave and free”), he did not appeal to baptism, but to natural law. In line with his broader scope, Epiphanes went beyond Paul by extending equality to animals.⁸⁴

Epiphanes went further than Paul in another way, too: it is not only that social class, wealth, gender, education (and so on) are indifferent. According to Epiphanes, even morally bad (φαυλός) people receive—and apparently ought to receive—an equal share of goods. The idea seems to have a basis in a tradition now enshrined in Matthew 5:45, where God makes the sun shine upon evil and good, and rains upon just and unjust (τὸν ἥλιον αὐτοῦ ἀνατέλλει ἐπὶ πονηροὺς καὶ ἀγαθοὺς καὶ βρέχει ἐπὶ δικαίους καὶ ἀδίκους, my emphasis). The idea of granting benefits to bad people would have been shocking to the literate elite of Epiphanes’s time (including Clement). Xenophon, for instance, wrote: “Indeed I myself could consider nothing more unequal (ἀνισότερον) among humans than that an evil and good person be judged worthy of what is equal (τοῦ ἴσου τόν τε κακὸν καὶ τὸν ἀγαθὸν ἀξιοῦσθαι)” (Cyropaedia 2.2.18).

The background of Epiphanes’s appeal to natural law seems in large part Stoic, and Stoicism had absorbed, by the second century CE, the Cynic emphasis on life lived “according to nature” (DL, Vita Phil. 6.71).⁸⁵ Natural law, for Stoics, was the right reason of nature, fixed in the human mind (Cicero, Leg. 1.18–19). Chrysippus (in Plutarch, Stoic. repug. 1035c) wrote: “It is not possible to discover any other source of justice nor any other origin than from Zeus and from universal nature (ἐκ τοῦ Διὸς καὶ τὴν ἐκ τῆς κοινῆς φύσεως)”—Zeus and nature here being synonyms (cf. DL, Vita Phil. 7.88).

Cicero eloquently described the Stoic understanding of natural law:

True law is right reason, in agreement with nature, diffused over everyone, consistent, everlasting, whose nature is to advocate duty by prescription and to deter wrongdoing by prohibition … There will not be a different law at Rome and at Athens, or a different law now and in the future, but one law, everlasting and immutable, will hold good for all peoples and at all times. And there will be one master and ruler for us all in common, God who is the founder of this law, its promulgator and its judge.

(Resp. 3.33, trans. Long and Sedley)

For the Stoics, as for Epiphanes, there was no separation of natural and divine law (Cicero, Nat. d. 1.36).⁸⁶

Philo similarly spoke of a single constitution and law of the universe, the reason of nature (λόγος φύσεως). He considered the laws of local cities to be additions to the ordinances of nature (θεσμοὶ τῆς φύσεως, Jos. 29–31; cf. Vit. Mos. 1.48, 2.48; Opif. 3, 143).⁸⁷ Clement, for his part, appealed to women not to wear gem-studded sandals, but to follow “the right purpose, the one according to nature” (τὸν σκοπὸν τὸν ὀρθὸν τὸν κατὰ φύσιν, Paed. 2.11.116.2). Clement even granted that there were certain “natural inclinations” (τὰς τῆς φύσεως ὀρέξεις, Strom. 3.12.82.1; cf. 2.4.18.4, 2.20.109.1, 3.11.72.3).⁸⁸

Text and translation

3.2.6.3. ἥλιος κοινὰς τροφὰς ζῷοις ἅπασιν ἀνατέλλει, δικαιοσύνης [τε] τῆς κοινῆς ἅπασιν ἐπ’ ἴσης δοθείσης, καὶ εἰς τὰ τοιαῦτα βοῶν γένος ὁμοίως γίνεται ὡς αἱ βόες καὶ συῶν ὡς οἱ σύες καὶ προβάτων ὡς τὰ πρόβατα καὶ τὰ λοιπὰ πάντα· 3.2.6.4. δικαιοσύνη γὰρ ἐν αὐτοῖς ἀναφαίνεται ἡ κοινότης. ἔπειτα κατὰ κοινότητα πάντα ὁμοίως κατὰ γένος σπείρεται, τροφή τε κοινὴ χαμαὶ νεμομένοις ἀνεῖται πᾶσι τοῖς κτήνεσι καὶ πᾶσιν ἐπ’ ἴσης, οὐδενὶ νόμῳ κρατουμένη, τῇ δὲ παρὰ τοῦ διδόντος κελεύσαντος χορηγίᾳ συμφώνως ἅπασι δικαιοσύνῃ παροῦσα.

3.2.6.3. The sun brings up common nourishment for all animals, since a common justice is equally bestowed on all. The same applies for the species of cows as for cows, the species of pigs as for pigs, the species of sheep as for sheep, and all the rest. 3.2.6.4. This is because communality is manifest as justice among them. Then, on the basis of communality, all are sown according to species. Common food rises from the soil for all cattle who graze, and for all equally. It is not controlled by any law. Rather, it is harmoniously present to all by the abundance of the Giver and Commander, by means of justice.

Commentary

Epiphanes again alludes to language now recognizable as Matthew 5:45, where God “causes his sun to rise” (τὸν ἥλιον αὐτοῦ ἀνατέλλει) on just and unjust. According to Epiphanes, justice is exemplified through the sun’s provision of equal nourishment. The sun sheds its light by fair distribution; it causes food to rise from the earth so that animals have a fair share .⁸⁹

When Epiphanes says that food is not controlled by any law, he probably refers to human-made regulations in order to create a contrast to the will of the “Giver and Commander.” This “Commander” could possibly refer to the sun, but is more likely to be God.⁹⁰ Compare Psalm 147:9 (LXX 146:9): God “gives to cattle their food” (διδόντι τοῖς κτήνεσι τροφὴν αὐτῶν).

Justice follows the orders of divine law, and no human law or custom can change this law. Epiphanes would have agreed with the author of the Platonic Definitions (411e), who defined justice as “the state underlying a law-abiding way of life” and “the state of obedience to the laws”—provided that these laws are understood as natural and divine.

Epiphanes appealed to animals because, though they lack higher cognition, they live by natural law. In fact, they better exemplify natural law, because—lacking higher reason—they cannot disobey the right reason of nature.

The appeal to animals in Greek philosophy to demonstrate natural law had a long history. Chrysippus appealed to animals in his own treatise On Justice, to the effect that they have an affective disposition (οἰκειώσις) relative to their offspring and commensurate with their need (Plutarch, Stoic. rep. 1038b). A Stoic source used by Cicero made a similar point: “Even in the lower animals, nature’s operation can be clearly discerned; when we observe the labor that they spend on bearing and rearing their young, this nature herself shows” (sic apparet a natura ipsa, Fin. 3.62, trans. H. Rackham, modified). Dio Chrysostom appealed to bees, ants, horses, and cows to show how they work together and feed together in peace—unlike human beings (Or. 40.40–1).⁹¹ Ps.-Heraclitus appealed to elephants, lions, and cattle as simple, unjealous, and non-violent toward their own kind (Ep. 7). Favorinus made a point that, suitably adapted, could have been made by Epiphanes himself:

Birds and fish keep their allotment granted by Zeus, as do all the other creatures on land. But humans on account of greed parcel out the land, chopping up the free gift of God, they set up borders against each other (ἄνθρωποι δὲ ὑπὸ πλεονεξίας τὴν γῆν διανέμονται, κατακερματίζοντες τὴν τοῦ θεοῦ δωρεὰν καὶ διορίζοντες πρὸς ἀλλήλους).

(frag. 96.11.3)⁹²

The appeal to animals to make moral exhortations is also, of course, attested in the Septuagint. Out of many examples, one can cite Proverbs 6:6–8: “Proceed to the ant, you procrastinator, … he prepares the rich nourishment of the harvest.”⁹³

By contrast, when Clement appealed to animals in his comments—specifically dogs, pigs, and goats (3.2.10.1)—he used them as negative examples for licentious behavior that humans should avoid.

Text and translation

3.2.7.1. ἀλλ’ οὐδὲ τὰ τῆς γενέσεως νόμον ἔχει γεγραμμένον, μετεγράφη γὰρ ἄν, σπείρουσι δὲ καὶ γεννῶσιν ἐπ’ ἴσης, κοινωνίαν ὑπὸ δικαιοσύνης ἔμφυτον ἔχοντες.

3.2.7.1. Nor is there a law written regarding matters of reproduction, for it would be copied out. Animals sow their seed and reproduce with equality, having communality inborn at the hands of Justice.

Commentary

In 3.2.6.4, Epiphanes observed, “on the basis of communality, all are sown according to species (or by type).” Here he turns more directly to the topic of reproduction, with the point that it runs deeper than written laws. There are, to be sure, human regulations related to animal reproduction. In the wild, however, animals obey nature’s law, which Epiphanes identified with divine law.⁹⁴ These animals typically have sex whenever and with whatever partner they please. In making this point, Epiphanes seems to disagree with Plato, who openly criticized the man who gave himself over to pleasure and “the law of cattle” (τετράποδος νόμον) in an effort to make babies (παιδοσπορεῖν) (Phaedrus 250e). But Epiphanes was not recommending that people have sex like animals, only that animals manifest a principle of equality in their sexual relationships. According to Epiphanes, the divine and natural law remains uninscribed by human instruments, for it is already inscribed into the bodies of animals, including human ones.⁹⁵

Perhaps Epiphanes drew on the Cynic and Stoic notion that sages of perfect moral excellence would not need written directions to live ethically. Antisthenes, founder of the Cynics, “held that the sage should live in society according to the rule of moral virtue, not the rules of legislated laws” (οὐ κατὰ τοὺς κειμένους νόμους πολιτεύσεσθαι) (DL, Vita Phil. 6.11). Diogenes the Cynic “allowed much less weight to what was prescribed by law than to what was prescribed by nature (μηδὲν οὕτω τοῖς κατὰ νόμον ὡς τοῖς κατὰ φύσιν διδούς)” (ibid. 6.71). Dio Chrysostom opined that “if all people were good, it’s clear that there would be no need of written laws” (Or. 76.4). Demonax, who flourished in the early second century CE, “said that laws were at risk of being useless, whether they were written for bad or good people. Good people don’t need laws (οὐ δέονται νόμων), and bad people aren’t at all made better by laws” (Lucian, Demonax 59). Epictetus spoke, in reference to the rules of slavery, of “these miserable laws of ours, laws of dead people (νόμους τοὺς τῶν νεκρῶν), not laws of the gods (τοὺς τῶν θεῶν)” (Diatr. 1.13.5).⁹⁶

These ideas had to some extent long been absorbed and adapted by philosophically inclined Jews and Christians. Philo observed: “There is no need … to give injunctions or prohibitions or exhortations to the perfect person formed after the Image [of God]” (Leg. All. 1.94). Abraham was such a perfect person who gladly accepted conformity to nature (ἀκολουθίαν φύσεως), since nature is the eldest ordinance (πρεσβύτατον θεσμόν) (Abr. 6; cf. Tertullian, Adv. Jud. 2.7). The law is not “enacted for a just person” (Clement, Strom. 7.2.10.1, cf. 1 Tim 1:9; Gal 5:23). Clement did not supply a reason, though a Stoic one can be supplied: just people’s dispositions are so in tune with nature, they do not require written law.

On Justice personified see the following note.

Text and translation

3.2.7.1. κοινῇ πᾶσιν ἐπ’ ἴσης ὀφθαλμὸν εἰς τὸ βλέπειν ὁ ποιητής τε καὶ πατὴρ πάντων δικαιοσύνῃ νομοθετήσας τῇ παρ’ αὐτοῦ παρέσχεν, οὐ διακρίνας θήλειαν ἄρρενος, οὐ λογικὸν ἀλόγου, καὶ καθάπαξ οὐδενὸς οὐδέν, ἰσότητι δε καὶ κοινότητι μερίσας τὸ βλέπειν ὁμοίως ἑνὶ κελεύσματι πᾶσι κεχάρισται.

3.2.7.1. Upon all in common, the creator and father of all equally bestowed the eye for seeing, legislating with Justice beside him. He did not differentiate female from male (Gal 3:28), rational from irrational—in short, anything from anything else. Rather, with equality and communality, he distributed the ability to see. In the same manner and with one command, he bestowed it on all.

Commentary

Epiphanes returned to the example of universal sight—already mentioned in 3.2.6.1 (οἵ δὲ κοινῇ πάντες βλέπουσιν). The concept was traditional. According to Ps.-Heraclitus, for instance, “God did not begrudge lighting up the eyes of all equally (ἐπίσης ἅπασιν ὀφθαλμοὺς ἅψαι,), nor opening ears, nor bestowing taste, smell, memory and hope” (Ep. 9).

The collocation “the creator and father of all” (ὁ ποιητής τε καὶ πατὴρ πάντων) was commonly used by Middle Platonists including Clement (Protr. 68.2.2; Strom. 5.12.78.1; cf. Philo, Abr. 58; Plutarch, Quaest. plat. 1000e–1001c).⁹⁷ In most cases, the phrase is directly quoted or adapted from Plato’s Timaeus 28c: “the creator and father of this universe” (τὸν μὲν οὖν ποιητὴν καὶ πατέρα τοῦδε τοῦ παντός).⁹⁸

The fact that the Father laid down the law (νομοθετήσας) shows that the Carpocratian God was also a legislator—and a beneficent one. It is not accurate, then, to call Epiphanes antinomian simply because he rejected select human laws.⁹⁹ If Epiphanes rejected some or all of human law, he did not reject unwritten and divine law.

The image of Justice beside God invokes an ancient schema. According to Hesiod, Justice (Δίκη) was the daughter of Zeus who sits beside her father reporting the wrongs done against her (Op. 220–4, 256–61). In an Orphic fragment, Justice sits by the throne of Zeus to watch over human deeds (πάντα τὰ τῶν ἀνθρώπων ἐφορᾶν, Pseudo-Demosthenes, Oration 25.11).¹⁰⁰ Philo, who borrowed the image of Justice as God’s assessor (Jos. 48), depicted her as taking vengeance on the builders of the Tower of Babel (Conf. 118). For Epiphanes, it seems, Justice was not a punisher of wrongdoing, but an advisor informing the Father as he established natural law for the universe.

Epiphanes already noted (3.2.6.1) that God does not distinguish male from female (μὴ διακρίνει … θηλείας ἄρσενας). The lack of preference between male and female may have been inspired by Gal 3:28. Here again, however, Epiphanes went beyond Paul. The lack of discrimination between λογικός and ἄλογος probably designates humans and (other) animals. We need not suppose that Epiphanes was “challenging the law at the beginning of Genesis which distinguished the species and attributed a singular rank to humanity.”¹⁰¹ Epiphanes did not discriminate between humans and other animals on the question of justice, but this point does not imply that he was challenging Genesis. We shall see below how Epiphanes advanced his own interpretation of Genesis, in particular, Genesis 1:28 (“Be fruitful and multiply!”)

For Epiphanes, the fact that God does not discriminate may have been a principle worked out from biblical sources, for instance, Acts 10:34: “God does not show favoritism” (οὐκ ἔστιν προσωπολήμπτης ὁ θεός), or Psalm 36:6 (LXX 35:7): “you will preserve humans and cattle, O Lord” (ἀνθρώπους καὶ κτήνη σώσεις, κύριε). It is true that Epiphanes was not keen to cite Jewish and Christian scripture, but that does not mean he was not formed by elements from these scriptures. He was writing a philosophical treatise, not a biblical commentary.

Excerpt 2: human laws introduce corruption

Text and translation

3.2.7.2. οἱ νόμοι δέ» φησίν, «ἀνθρώπων ἀμαθίαν κολάζειν μὴ δυνάμενοι παρανομεῖν ἐδίδαξαν· ἡ γὰρ ἰδιότης τῶν νόμων τὴν κοινωνίαν τοῦ θείου νόμου κατέτεμεν καὶ παρατρώγει,» μὴ συνιεὶς τὸ τοῦ ἀποστόλου ῥητόν, λέγοντος «‘διὰ νόμου τὴν ἁμαρτίαν ἔγνων’· 3.2.7.3. τὸ τε ἐμὸν καὶ τὸ σόν,» φησι, διὰ τῶν νόμων παρεισελθεῖν, «μηκέτι εἰς κοινότητα· κοινά τε γὰρ· καρπουμένων μῆτε γῆν μήτε κτήματα, ἀλλὰ μηδὲ γάμον·»

3.2.7.2. But the laws,” he says, “incapable of punishing human ignorance, taught (people) to act unlawfully. For the individuality of the laws tore apart and chewed up the commonality of divine law,” not understanding the declaration of the apostle who says, “‘through law I have come to know sin’ (Rom 7:7). 3.2.7.3. What is ‘mine and yours,’” he says, crept in through laws (Rom 5:20), “when neither earth nor possessions—for they are common—were any longer enjoyed for common use—not even marriage.”

Text and translation

The “laws” here refer to human-made laws, not divine and natural ones. The problem, according to Epiphanes, is that people are ignorant of divine and natural laws. This leads them to create particular and local laws (property laws, tax codes, marriage laws, and so on) which erode the natural law that all things are common.

The author of the pseudo-Clementine Recognitions (10.5.5–7) opined that

There ought to be a common use of things in this world for all people. Through injustice, however, one person claims ownership of one thing, another of another, and so among mortals division is born. Later, a magnificent sage among the Greeks [Pythagoras] realized this and said that everything among friends was common. Included in everything was, of course, wives. Accordingly, just as one could not, he said, parcel out the air or sunlight, so nothing else in this world which has been given to all to possess, can be divided. It must be held in common.

Although it is true that Pythagoras was widely credited with the saying “the things of friends are common” (κοινὰ τὰ φιλῶν), Pythagoreans never shared wives. According to some reports, Pythagoras had a wife, a woman called Theano, who was also a teacher and philosopher.¹⁰²

Epiphanes had a biblical and philosophical basis for his views. It was a biblical idea that the “earth is the Lord’s, and all its fullness” (Ps 23:1, LXX). The verse could imply that humans do not own anything on earth; they are mere caretakers like Adam in the Garden of Eden. A poet of the Sibylline Oracles wrote that “The Heavenly one distributed the earth in common to all” (3.247). Another poet envisioned a time when “life and wealth will be common to all, and the earth will be equally shared by all, not divided by walls or fences” (8.205–7).¹⁰³ Epiphanes considered this idealized eschatological condition the reality of the present, natural world.

Otto Stählin, followed by Descourtieux and Le Boulluec, took the clause, “not understanding the declaration of the apostle,” as an intervention by Clement.¹⁰⁴ This judgment is probably right, since συνιείς is masculine and evidently designates Epiphanes. I have, however, adjusted the punctuation to indicate that Epiphanes—not just Clement—may himself have cited Romans 7:7 in order to support his theory. Whether or not Epiphanes actually quoted Romans 7:7, however, he closely followed the logic of the verse. Only from Romans 7:7 do we know that the “sin” not known apart from Law is identified as “desire” (ἐπιθυμία); and the quote, “do not desire” (οὐκ ἐπιθυμήσεις) at the end of Romans 7:7 is exactly the part of Jewish law that Epiphanes will criticize later on (3.2.9.2–3).

Clement went on to summarize Epiphanes, as indicated by the indirect discourse with παρεισελθεῖν (here: “crept in”). The use of this distinctive verb, however, should probably be granted to Epiphanes. This is the verb that Paul employed in reference to Jewish law in Romans 5:20: “The law slipped in (νόμος δὲ παρεισῆλθεν) so that transgression might increase.” If Epiphanes alluded to Romans 5:20, he apparently read “law” here and in Romans 7:7 in the larger sense of human laws and customs. Epiphanes may also have recalled Paul’s tagline, “all things are yours” (πάντα γὰρ ὑμῶν ἐστιν, 1 Cor 3:21), which itself dovetails with a Cynic-Stoic line of thought. Diogenes of Sinope reportedly taught that “all things belong to the gods. Wise people are friends of the gods, and the property of friends is common; therefore everything belongs to the wise” (DL, Vita Phil. 6.37). (On the wisdom of the Corinthians, see 1 Cor 3:18–19; 4:10.)

In light of Epiphanes’s (at least tacit) use of Paul (Rom 7:7; 5:20, and so on), one should question Gaca’s view that Epiphanes aimed to subvert Paul’s sexual ethics.¹⁰⁵ The sexual ethics of Epiphanes and Paul, as constructed by Gaca, may well be in conflict; but from Epiphanes’s own point of view, he tried to follow Paul and to use Pauline ideas in support of his own perspective.

The language of “mine” and “yours” resembles that of Plato in Republic 462c (cf. 464c–e, Laws 5.739c–d).¹⁰⁶ The human distinction between “what is mine and not mine,” Plato observed, is the root of social vices and troubles. Sharing all in common leads to social virtues and peace, conditioning the emotions of the group so that they feel pain and pleasure at the same things at the same time.

Epiphanes’s use of μηκέτι (“when neither earth nor cattle were any longer enjoyed for common use”) may indicate that he maintained a vision of primitive communism, popular among some writers. Seneca, for instance, spoke of a “fortune-favored period when the bounties of nature lay open to all, for indiscriminate use, before avarice and luxury had broken the bonds which held mortals together, and they, abandoning their common allotment, separated and turned to plunder” (Epistle 90.36). Laws were introduced only “when vice stole in and kingdoms were transformed into tyrannies” (§6, trans. Gummere, modified).¹⁰⁷ The latter view is attributed to the Stoic Posidonius (cf. Cicero, Off. 2.42; Tacitus, Annals 3.26).

The final phrase—“but not even marriage” shows that Epiphanes included marriage in his list of goods to be enjoyed in common. Accordingly, despite the views of some,¹⁰⁸ Epiphanes did not reject marriage in itself. It is important, however, to understand his particular concept of marriage, which will be explored next.

Text and translation

3.2.7.4. «κοινῇ γὰρ ἅπασιν ἐποίησε τὰς ἀμπέλους, αἵ μή<τε> στρουθὸν μήτε κλέπτην ἀπαρνοῦνται, καὶ τὸν σῖτον οὕτως καὶ τοὺς ἄλλους καρπούς. ἡ δὲ κοινωνία παρανομηθεῖσα καὶ τὰ τῆς ἰσότητος, ἐγέννησε θρεμμάτων καὶ καρπῶν κλέπτην.

3.2.7.4. For he (God) made vines for all in common, vines which are denied neither to the sparrow nor to the thief (cf. Matt 6:19–20, 26), along with wheat and other harvested products. When communality was legislated against, along with other matters of equality, it produced the thievery of animals and harvested products (Rom 7:7).

Commentary

Epiphanes’s basic teaching was that earth’s bounty should be shared in accordance with natural and divine law. Some human crimes, accordingly, are human inventions. Stealing, for instance, is impossible in the natural state in which nothing is owned. Birds and other animals, for instance, are not thieves for eating the products of the field. Private ownership, according to Epiphanes, is thus a violation of natural and divine justice.

In holding these views, Epiphanes may have followed Plato who, in his latest work, still upheld the elimination of private ownership as the highest ideal, even if difficult to realize in practice (Leg. 739b–e, with the critique of Aristotle, Pol. 2.2–6, 1261b–6b). We can also compare Cleanthes, who in his Hymn to Zeus (line 20), wrote that people rejected “the common law of God” (θεοῦ κοινον νόμον). Even Cicero—a wealthy Roman aristocrat—observed that “nothing is private by nature” (sunt autem privata nulla natura) but only by human custom. “By nature” things are “common” (communia) (Off. 1.21). Likewise Seneca opined: “Let us have things in common (habeamus in commune), for this we were born (nati sumus)” (Ep. 95.53).

Fundamentally, however, Epiphanes’s point here seems to have been worked out from a verse he may have already cited, namely Romans 7:7: “I did not know sin except through law” (my emphasis). Epiphanes apparently took Paul to be speaking for all humanity, not just in regard to Jewish law. There is no sin with regard to property if there are no human laws creating property.

Epiphanes’s discussion is also reminiscent of verses from the Sermon on the Mount, one of which (Matt 6:26), presents the birds as neither sowing nor reaping but being fed by their Father in heaven. The other (Matt 6:19–20) mentions thieves who dig through and steal from storehouses. In context, Jesus proposed an ethic of subsistence-level contentment. Epiphanes’s point is different, to be sure, but the gospel imagery may have influenced Epiphanes’s language.

Excerpt 3: equality in sexual relationships

Text and translation

3.2.8.1. κοινῇ τοίνυν ὁ θεὸς ἅπαντα ἀνθρώπῳ ποιήσας καὶ τὸ θῆλυ τῷ ἄρρενι κοινῇ συναγαγὼν καὶ πάνθ’ ὁμοίως τὰ ζῷα κολλήσας τὴν δικαιοσύνην ἀνέφηνεν κοινωνίαν μετ’ ἰσότητος.

3.2.8.1. Accordingly, God made all things in common for humanity, bringing together female to male in common (Gen 1:27; 2:22), and by uniting all animals in the same way, he declared justice to be communality with equality.

Commentary

Marriage and sexuality are here brought in as applications of Epiphanes’s definition of justice made in 3.2.6.1—“communality with equality.” To illustrate his definition, Epiphanes did not cite any notion of “wives held in common” as in Plato’s Republic. Instead, he employed the example of God joining the female to the male. Here one can detect an allusion to Genesis 1:27 (“male and female he made them”) and 2:22, where the creator, after making Eve from Adam’s rib (or side), “led her to Adam (ἤγαγεν αὐτὴν πρὸς τὸν Αδαμ; cf. Epiphanes’s συναγαγών)” for union (προσκολληθήσεται in Gen 2:24; cf. Epiphanes’s κολλήσας). The wellspring for Epiphanes’s imagery and moral imagination was, at least in part, biblical.

According to Epiphanes, humans are not the exception in the animal kingdom, but part of it. By natural desires, God joins all animals together according to natural and divine law. Accordingly, the marriage enjoyed by the first humans was not a paradigm for monogamy, but of the union of genders more generally (“male” and “female” are brought together for [sexual] coupling, not husbands and wives for monogamy). This point will become explicit in what follows.

Text and translation

3.2.8.2. οἵ δὲ γεγονότες οὕτω, τὴν συνάγουσαν κοινωνίαν τὴν γένεσιν αὐτῶν ἀπηρνήθησαν καὶ φασιν· ‘ὁ μίαν ἀγόμενος ἐχέτω,’ δυναμένων κοινωνεῖν ἁπάντων, ὥσπερ ἀπέφηνε τὰ λοιπὰ τῶν ζῷων.»

3.2.8.2. But though these people are born in this way, they have denied both the communality that joins (couples) together and their own birth. By saying, “Let the man who marries one (woman) have her,” (1 Cor 7:2) even though all people can share in common, just as he declared for the rest of the animals.

Commentary

“These people” (οἵ δέ) apparently refer to persons who assume or assert a doctrine of private property and/or monogamy. Under Roman law, women’s bodies were not owned by their husbands de jure. De facto, however, many men claimed a kind of ownership over their wives’ bodies. Such de facto claims help to explain why a wife’s adultery, from an androcentric perspective, was viewed as a terrible crime: another man had used what belonged to the husband (the body of his wife), violating the husband’s rights. Broadly speaking, married women having sex with other men was a serious and actionable offense in Roman law, whereas men could typically have sex with slaves, teenage boys, or prostitutes with no formal punishments.¹⁰⁹

Greco-Roman ideals were woven into Christian tradition. Paul wrote that “the wife does not have authority over her own body; the husband does” (1 Cor 7:4). Of course, Paul added that the wife has authority over her husband’s body—but not many husbands in the ancient Mediterranean would have agreed. Paul himself stated why: a wife was ὕπανδρος—subject to a man (Rom 7:2). Christian household codes exhort women to be subject to their husbands (Col 3:18; Eph 5:22; 1 Pet 3:1–7). Mutual submission was also recommended, but generally speaking, Christian women were asked to follow an ideal of obedience: “Sarah obeyed Abraham and called him ‘lord’” (1 Pet 3:6).

Epiphanes did not agree with this ideal. The logic of his thought spelled the end of monogamy and any marriage in which a husband claimed some sort of de facto ownership of his wife’s body (and activities).¹¹⁰ Admittedly, Epiphanes seems never to have implemented his revolutionary theory of marriage, and if he did, it might not have been as egalitarian as a modern person would wish. There is little doubt, however, that Epiphanes’s theory of marriage ultimately collided with both Greco-Roman and early catholic ideals of wifely submission (Col 3:18; Eph 5:22).

Epiphanes criticized his real or imagined opponents because they were born from natural desire, regardless of whether that desire was realized in a monogamous relationship. Despite this natural law of free coupling, mainstream Greco-Roman society constrained reproduction to occur through the linkage of a single man and a single woman who—in the Greco-Roman context—often married for social and political reasons, not out of love. Children born outside these unions were considered illegitimate.

The phrase ὁ μίαν ἀγόμενος ἐχέτω is a possible allusion to 1 Cor 7:2 (ἕκαστος τὴν ἑαυτοῦ γυναῖκα ἐχέτω)—though Epiphanes apparently did not consider this phrase to express Paul’s own view (cf. 1 Cor 7:7; Clement, Strom. 3.15.96.1). The verb ἐχέτω expresses a kind of possession or at least possessiveness. The phrase is introduced by φησίν in L, which editors have changed to φασιν. But if the text is preserved, Paul or some undesignated general speaker would be the subject.

The animals again show the natural law that any man can join with any woman, and that all people—not just men—can enjoy intercourse with willing partners. Kathy Gaca rightly observes that Epiphanes’s principle, if it was put into practice, would allow greater sexual freedom to women, not just to men.¹¹¹

Text and translation

3.2.8.3. ταῦτα εἰπὼν κατὰ λέξιν πάλιν ὁμοίως αὐταῖς ταῖς λέξεσιν ἐπιφέρει· «τὴν γὰρ ἐπιθυμίαν εὔτονον καὶ σφοδροτέραν ἐνεποίησε τοῖς ἄρρεσιν εἰς τὴν τῶν γενῶν παραμονήν, ἥν οὔτε νόμος οὔτε ἔθος οὔτε ἄλλο <τι> τῶν ὄντων ἀφανίσαι δύναται. Θεοῦ γάρ ἐστι δόγμα.»

3.2.8.3. He (Epiphanes) said this word for word, and likewise added, to quote his exact language: “For he (God) implanted vibrant and rather forceful desire in males for the persistence of human families, a desire which no law, custom, or anything else can destroy, for it is a decree of God.”

Commentary

In this passage, Epiphanes certainly gendered human desire, making “vibrant and rather forceful desire” the particular trait of men.¹¹² At the same time, it is imprecise to affirm that Epiphanes “only” says that “God established desire in males.”¹¹³ Epiphanes referred, not just to desire, but to “vibrant and rather forceful” desire; and it is this “vibrant” desire that God placed in males specifically. The assumption, in my view, is not that women do not have sexual desires, but that they are not as “vibrant and forceful” as a male’s.¹¹⁴

In my view, then, Epiphanes did not go “far beyond Plato by attributing desire to reproduce to men instead of both men and women.”¹¹⁵ In fact, both Plato and Epiphanes seem to have agreed that a stronger and more vibrant (sexual) impulse is a characteristic of men. According to the Athenian philosopher, the creator of the world instructed that the human soul must have sexual desire (ἔρως) mixed with pleasure and pain (Tim. 42a), but it was the young gods who designed the human body so that it was capable of sexual intercourse (Tim. 91a–d). They implanted in the male member “a lively desire for the emission” of seed (τῆς ἐκροῆς ζωτικὴν ἐπιθυμίαν ἐμποιήσας αὐτῷ), producing a “love for reproduction” (τοῦ γεννᾶν ἔρωτα) (91b). “Therefore the nature of the genitals in men became disobedient and self-willed, like an animal who does not listen to reason, attempting to dominate everything on account of frenzied desires” (δι’ ἐπιθυμίας οἰστρώδεις, 91b).¹¹⁶ Such language resembles Epiphanes’s concept of natural law—that a strong and vibrant desire for sex was implanted by God in males for the perpetuation of the human species.¹¹⁷

Here we can compare the argument of Musonius Rufus, a Stoic of late first-century CE Rome:

If anything is in accord with nature (κατὰ φύσιν), certainly marriage is; since, for the sake of marriage, the creator of humanity first divided our kind, then made for them two sets of genitals, the one female, the other male. Then he implanted strong desire (ἐνεποίησεν ἐπιθυμίαν ἰσχυράν) in each of them for intercourse and communion (ὁμιλίας καὶ τῆς κοινωνίας).¹¹⁸

In this passage, sexual desire is both male and female, and Musonius seems to view the desire as equal in both sexes. Epiphanes concurred with the Stoics in making arguments from nature, but obviously disagreed with them on the fine points.

Epiphanes’s observation that sexual desire was given for the persistence of human families (εἰς τὴν τῶν γενῶν παραμονήν) is another traditional view. A Pythagorean treatise ascribed to Ocellus Lucanus (probably second century BCE, but the date is unclear), observes that “the (reproductive) potencies themselves, and the genitals, and the yearnings that were given to human beings by God for sexual intercourse were not given for the sake of pleasure, but for the continual perpetuation of the human family” (εἰς τὸν ἀεὶ χρόνον διαμονῆς τοῦ γένους) (On the Nature of the Universe 44).¹¹⁹

For Epiphanes, natural law is simultaneously divine law, a decree (δόγμα)—or possibly teaching—of God. No doctrine of sin intervenes to explain the human drive for sex. It is simply taken to be implanted by God. In the mind of Epiphanes, the “decree” of God is read off from the bodily drives of humans, who in this respect are no different from any other animal.

In sum, according to Epiphanes, humans were born by a sexual drive that does not align with Greco-Roman and modern Christian customs of monogamy; it joins people together in bodily union for the production of offspring—all of which would be considered legitimate. Epiphanes did not openly renounce marriage, however. He proposed, rather, that confining sexual desire to a monogamous relationship stood in tension with natural and divine law to preserve and propagate humankind.

Text and translation

3.2.8.4. καὶ πῶς ἔτι οὗτος ἐν τῷ καθ’ ἡμᾶς ἐξετασθείη λόγῳ, ἄντικρυς καὶ τὸν νόμον καὶ τὸ εὐαγγέλιον διὰ τούτων καθαίρων; ὅ μὲν γάρ φησιν· «οὐ μοιχεύσεις,» τὸ δὲ «πᾶς ὁ προσβλέπων κατ’ ἐπιθυμίαν ἤδη ἐμοίχευσεν» λέγει. 3.2.8.5. τὸ γὰρ «οὐκ ἐπιθυμήσεις» πρὸς τοῦ νόμου λεγόμενον τὸν ἕνα δείκνυσι θεὸν διὰ νόμου καὶ προφητῶν καὶ εὐαγγελίου κηρυσσόμενον· λέγει γὰρ· «οὐκ ἐπιθυμήσεις τῆς τοῦ πλησίον.»

3.2.8.4. How indeed can this one still be approved for our registry when he directly tears down both the law and the gospel? For the Law says, “Do not commit adultery” (Exod 20:13) and the other speaks, “Every person who looks with desire has already committed adultery” (Matt 5:28). 3.2.8.5. For the command spoken with reference to the Law, “Do not desire” (cf. Rom 7:7), shows that the God preached through (the) Law, Prophets, and Gospel is one. For it says, “Do not desire your neighbor’s wife” (Exod 20:17/Deut 5:21).

Commentary

Clement was concerned that Epiphanes not be enrolled in Clement’s ecclesial registry—perhaps indicating (1) that there were other ecclesial registries, and/or (2) that Carpocratians were in fact part of Clement’s ecclesial network. As already noted, Clement will later tell the story of a Carpocratian who met “one of our beautiful maidens”—perhaps in an ecclesial setting (Strom. 3.4.27.3).

It was axiomatic for Clement that Law and Gospel agree, even if the Gospel intensifies the demands of the Law (cf. Strom. 3.11.76.1). Clement’s citation of the law against adultery (Exod 20:17/Deut 5:21, sharpened by Matt 5:28) was common (e.g., Paed. 2.6.51.2, 3.2.13.3), and it anticipates Epiphanes’s discussion in 3.2.9.2.

Text and translation

3.2.8.6. ὁ πλησίον δὲ οὐχ ὁ Ἰουδαῖος τῷ Ἰουδαίῳ, ἀδελφὸς γὰρ καὶ ταὐτότης τοῦ πνεύματος, λείπεται δὴ πλησίον τὸν ἀλλοεθνῆ λέγειν. πῶς γὰρ οὐ πλησίον ὁ οἷός τε κοινωνῆσαι τοῦ πνεύματος; οὐ γὰρ μόνων Ἑβραίων, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐθνῶν πατὴρ Ἀβραάμ.

3.2.8.6. The neighbor is not a Jew relating to another Jew, but a brother with the same breath. It remains, plainly, that he speaks of the foreigner as a neighbor. For how is one who can share breath not a neighbor? For Abraham is not the father of the Hebrews only but of the nations also (Rom 4:16–17; Gal 3:6–9).

Commentary

Clement was keen to show that Jewish law was not of only local application, but universal. In his Salvation of the Rich, Clement wrote:

When Jesus was asked “Who is my neighbor?” he defined neighbor not the same way as the Jews as one related by blood or a fellow citizen or a proselyte, or as one also circumcised, or as one subject to one and the same law.

(§28)

Instead, Jesus told the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30–7) and approved the definition of a neighbor as a person showing compassion.

In the present passage, Clement defined “neighbor” as a person of different ethnicity who breathes the common air. (Πνεῦμα as “[holy] Spirit” is not universal, but restricted to Christians, Strom. 3.11.77.3). It was widely held among Gentile critics of Jews that Jews were only required to deal justly with members of their own ethnic group. Take, for instance, Tacitus: “Jews are extremely loyal toward one another, and always ready to show compassion, but toward every other people they feel only hate and enmity” (Histories 5.5.1, trans. Stern).¹²⁰ Clement endeavored to show that this view was not the intent of scripture, which addressed a wider (Gentile) audience.

Text and translation

3.2.9.1. εἰ δὲ ἡ μοιχευθείσα καὶ ὁ εἰς αὐτὴν πορνεύσας θανάτῳ κολάζεται, δῆλον δήπου τὴν ἐντολὴν τὴν λέγουσαν «οὐκ ἐπιθυμήσεις τῆν γυναῖκα τοῦ πλησίον» περὶ τῶν ἐθνῶν διαγορεύειν, ἵνα τις κατὰ νόμον καὶ τῆς τοῦ πλησίον καὶ τῆς ἀδελφῆς ἀποσχόμενος ἄντικρυς ἀκούσῃ παρὰ τοῦ κυρίου· «ἐγὼ δὲ λέγω, οὐκ ἐπιθυμήσεις»· ἡ δὲ τοῦ «ἐγὼ» μορίου προσθήκη προσεχεστέραν δείκνυσι τῆς ἐντολῆς τὴν ἐνέργειαν.

3.2.9.1. If then, the female adulterer and the male fornicator are punished by death (Lev 20:10; Deut 22:22), it is surely manifest that the command stating “Do not desire your neighbor’s wife” (Exod 20:17/Deut 5:21) speaks explicitly about the nations. Consequently, according to Law, a person refraining from his neighbor’s wife and sister, can hear directly from the Lord: “But I say, do not desire.” The addition of the pronoun “I” shows more exactingly the force of the command.

Commentary

Jewish laws which command the death penalty for adultery (Lev 20:10; Deut 22:22) address a “human being” (ἄνθρωπος) in general. Deuteronomy 22:22, furthermore, does not specify that the adulterer and adulteress are neighbors—they could be anyone.¹²¹ Exodus 20:17, according to Clement, has the same global audience in view. These directives are strengthened by Jesus’s own universal command “do not desire.”

This command from Jesus cannot be called “direct” (ἄντικρυς), however. Jesus forbade looking at a woman with the intent to desire her (πρὸς τὸ ἐπιθυμῆσαι, Matt 5:27–8). Clement apparently took this in the broader sense of, “Do not desire” (οὐκ ἐπιθυμήσεις), a partial quote of Exodus 20:17/Deuteronomy 5:21 which resonates more clearly with Romans 7:7, where the simple οὐκ ἐπιθυμήσεις appears. Yet the fact that Clement thought he quoted from the Sermon on the Mount is indicated by the ἐγὼ δὲ λέγω, a common refrain in Matthew 5:21–42, and an element of the saying that he underscored (cf. Strom. 3.11.71.3, 3.4.31.1).

Clement’s overall point seems to be that Gospel accords with Torah, in that the Gospel clarifies the intent of the Law, as he wrote in the Protrepticus 108.5: “you shall not desire, for by desire alone you have committed adultery” (οὐκ ἐπιθυμήσεις, ἐπιθυμίᾳ γὰρ μόνῃ μεμοίχευκας).

Excerpt 4: a criticism of the Mosaic law

Text and translation

3.2.9.2. καὶ ὅτι θεομαχεῖ ὅ τε Καρποκράτης ὅ τ’ Ἐπιφάνης, <ὅς> ἐν αὐτῷ τῷ πολυθρυλήτῳ βιβλίῳ, τῷ Περὶ Δικαιοσύνης λέγω, 122 ὧδέ πως ἐπιφέρει κατὰ λέξιν· «ἔνθεν ὡς γελοῖον εἰρηκότος τοῦ νομοθέτου ῥῆμα τοῦτο ἀκουστέον ‘οὐκ ἐπιθυμήσεις,’ πρὸς τὸ γελοιότερον εἰπεῖν ‘τῶν τοῦ πλησίον’· αὐτὸς γὰρ ὁ τὴν ἐπιθυμίαν δοὺς ὡς συνέχουσαν τὰ τῆς γενέσεως ταύτην ἀφαιρεῖσθαι κελεύει μηδενὸς αὐτὴν ἀφελῶν ζῷου· τὸ δὲ ‘τῆς τοῦ πλησίον γυναικὸς’ ἰδιότητα τὴν κοινωνίαν ἀναγκάζων ἔτι γελοιότερον εἶπεν.»

3.2.9.2. Moreover, the fact that Carpocrates and Epiphanes fight against God—I mean in that much-touted book On Justice—(is evident). He adds at one point, quoting directly: “Therefore one must understand the legislator speaking this phrase as something comical: ‘Do not desire.’ It is even more comical to say, ‘your neighbour’s property’ (Exod 20:17/Deut 5:21). For the very one (God) who gave desire to sustain reproduction commands that it be removed, though he has not removed it from any animal. And by his phrase, ‘your neighbour’s wife’ (Exod 20:17/Deut 5:21), he forces what is common to become private, and speaks what is still more comical.”

Commentary

A “god-fighter” (θεόμαχος) was a well-known type in Greco-Roman lore. The Greek hero Capaneus, for instance, prayed to his right hand as the only present divinity, and the Italian warlord Mezentius openly scorned the gods.¹²³ In Acts, the Jews themselves became “god-fighters,” by opposing Christians (Acts 5:39; cf. Josephus, JW 5.378).¹²⁴

Clement added “Carpocrates” to the list of “god-fighters,” but it is not clear why. Perhaps he assumed that because Carpocrates taught Epiphanes that Epiphanes also spoke for his father. Heresiologists calling their opponents “god-fighters” already had a precedent (Irenaeus, AH 2.30.1). It is a polemical tag that Clement will soon use against Marcion (Strom. 3.4.25.2)—who, according to Clement, had virtually the opposite position on sexual ethics as Epiphanes.¹²⁵

As Jurasz points out, it is unfair to call Epiphanes a “god-fighter” if he was in fact criticizing Moses’s laws, while endeavoring to maintain God’s (natural) law.¹²⁶ From Epiphanes’s point of view, the “god-fighters” would be those who constrain God-given desire by means of human-made legislation. Clement may have implied in 3.2.8.5 that Epiphanes thought of the God of the gospel and Torah as different, but Clement never quoted any material from Epiphanes stating this point. Epiphanes did not declare war on God, and we have no direct evidence that he distinguished the Judean deity from the true God.

Clement’s observation that Epiphanes’s On Justice was “much-acclaimed” was probably sarcastic. At the same time, Clement was concerned enough about the book to claim that through it the Christian name was besmirched (3.2.5.1).

What readers tend to focus on is Epiphanes’s seeming antagonism toward Jewish law. Previous scholars have observed in Epiphanes’s remarks “a subversive kind of contradicting biblical law” and “an orientation … directed against the biblical commandments.”¹²⁷ Some even speak of “an entirely renunciatory attitude against the commands of the Old Testament creator”¹²⁸ and a “radical rejection of the Old Testament law.”¹²⁹

More caution is needed. Much of the meaning of this passage hangs on the interpretation of Epiphanes’s word γελοῖον—here translated “comical”—though it could also be translated “ridiculous,” “ludicrous,” “amusing,” “funny,” “facetious,” “absurd,” or even “paradoxical.” The distinction is between what provokes laughter and what provokes derision. In other words: was “the legislator” playing a joke in which he participated, or were the legislator’s commands themselves being derided?

The latter interpretation would be supported if we accepted Irenaeus’s testimony that Jesus himself, according to Carpocrates, “despised” Jewish customs (AH 1.25.1). Epiphanes would then be following in Jesus’s footsteps by mocking Pentateuchal regulations which assumed private property. Exodus 20:17 commanded that men not desire the wives of their neighbors just like any other possession listed in that verse—house, field, slave, slave girl, cow, and so on. According to Epiphanes, such a directive could not be the law of the creator deity, namely natural law, as seen throughout the animal kingdom.

According to Epiphanes, the true God, the creator and father, gave to humans sexual desire in order to reproduce. It would be silly and self-defeating for him to command people not to have this desire when it naturally arose by divine law, and since the desire was not barred from any other animal species. Epiphanes’s God was the God of Genesis, who commanded, “Be fruitful and multiply” (Gen 1:28)—granting humans the desire to perform the command. In fact, Filastrius, in the late fourth century, connects this very verse to Carpocratians who, reportedly, “judge every resurrection to consist in the procreation of children through horrid intercourse … supposing they fulfill the precept of the law: ‘Produce children and multiply!’” (Gen 1:28).¹³⁰ (“Horrid” is Filastrius’s word. There is no evidence that Carpocratians found sex repugnant.)

It is likely, then, that Epiphanes’s criticism was not against the creator God, whom he called “maker and father of all” (3.2.7.1). Clement, of course, viewed Epiphanes as a God-fighter, but that is Clement’s accusation, an accusation that was inconsistent with Epiphanes’s own point of view. For Clement, any criticism of Moses as legislator was implicitly a criticism of God (Strom. 1.26.167.1). Epiphanes did not conflate the word of God (as exemplified, e.g., in Gen 1:28) with the word of Moses (e.g., Exod 20:17). The “legislator” as an epithet for Moses was common (cf. e.g., Philo, Life of Moses 1.1; Josephus, C. Ap. 2.161; Clement, Strom. 5.5.29.3). It was accordingly Moses who, in the view of Epiphanes, wrote in opposition to God’s law mandating procreation.¹³¹

Criticisms of Moses as opposed to God occur in other ancient Christian works.¹³² Jesus himself, as represented in Matthew 19:4–8, was able to distinguish Moses’s regulations from God’s law. By divine law, a man is forever joined to his wife (Gen 2:24). Moses’s divorce law, on the other hand, was introduced due to the “hard hearts” of the Israelites (cf. Clement, Strom. 3.6.47.2). Ptolemy the Valentinian used this very example in his Epistle to Flora (4.4–10). According to Ptolemy, Jesus

demonstrates that there is a law of God, which prevents a wife from divorcing her husband, and another law, of Moses, which permits the breaking of this union on account of hard-heartedness. And according to this, Moses legislates contrary to God.

(4.5–6, trans. Geoffrey S. Smith)

Ptolemy, however, did not consider Moses’s legislation comical. The Israelite lawgiver, according to Ptolemy, acted by necessity in order to prevent unhappy marriages. Thus Ptolemy’s view was distinct from that of Epiphanes. Epiphanes would have agreed, however, with Ptolemy’s general point that, “the law [of Moses] was not established by the perfect God and father … since it includes ordinances foreign to the nature and opinion of such a God” (3.4).

Compared with Ptolemy, Epiphanes’s critique of Moses sounds harsh. Compared with the author of the Second Treatise of the Great Seth, Epiphanes’s criticism actually seems mild:

Moses was a joke (ⲛⲉⲟⲩⲥⲱⲃⲉ ⲡⲉ ⲙⲱⲩⲥⲏⲥ). He was called a faithful slave and friend. The testimony about him is in error, since he never knew me (God)—neither him nor those before him … For there was an instruction delivered by angels (Gal 3:19) to keep food laws and bitter slavery. They never knew truth and they never will, since there is a great deception in their souls (2 Cor 3:14), and they can never find understanding with freedom to know, until they come to know the Child of Humanity.

(Treat. Seth [NHC VII,2] 63.26–64.12).

The author of the Second Treatise of Great Seth attacked the creator, the Jewish deity, as a false god who was not “our Father” (64.17–65.2). Epiphanes, however, did not make the same distinction between the creator and the true God; nor did he ever, in the material that survives, make fun of or attack the being whom he called creator. To attribute an attack against the Old Testament deity (the creator) to Epiphanes is an interpretation that conflicts with Epiphanes’s theology in 3.2.7.1 (that the creator is the father who, it seems, legislates what is good).¹³³

But would Epiphanes have attributed part of the Decalogue to Moses and not to the creator—a Decalogue said to have been spoken by God himself (Exod 20:1)? Here we can compare Clement’s “Antitactae” who attributed the law against adultery (part of the Ten Commandments) to a “second” hostile being, not to the true God and father (Strom. 3.4.34.3–4). There were evidently precedents for viewing the speaker of the Decalogue as someone other than God. In the early fifth century, Augustine reported that “Carpocrates” denied that “the Law given through Moses was given by God” (negans etiam legem quae per Moysen data est, deum dedisse) (Leg. 2.12.40). This report is at least partly true: some parts of the Mosaic law (such as Exod 20:17), according to Epiphanes, were not given by God.

This discussion raises a question: if Epiphanes interpreted sexual desire and procreation (Gen 1:28) as divine and natural law, how did he interpret Genesis 2:24, which seems to present a kind of marriage between Adam and Eve? If we can reconstruct Epiphanes’s logic, Genesis 2:24 would not have legitimated monogamy (cf. the Commentary on 3.2.6.1). If Epiphanes took the verse in reference to marriage, marriage would not be viewed—as in Plato’s Republic—as a kind of zero-sum game. Multiple “marriages” could occur serially through multiple sex acts, with no need to divorce. Greek speakers (including Epiphanes in 3.2.7.3) could use the verb “to marry” (γαμεῖν) in the sense of “have intercourse with,” and this very usage will appear in the “quote” of Xanthos below in 3.2.11.1. In short, Epiphanes—in his battle against private property—did not attack marriage itself. Instead, he re-envisioned it in a non-possessive and non-monogamous way.¹³⁴

Text and translation

3.2.10.1. Καὶ ταῦτα μὲν οἱ γενναῖοι Καρποκρατιανοὶ δογματίζουσι. τούτους φασὶ καί τινας ἄλλους ζηλωτὰς τῶν ὁμοίων κακῶν εἰς τὰ δεῖπνα ἀθροιζομένους (οὐ γὰρ ἀγάπην εἴποιμ’ ἄν ἔγωγε τὴν συνέλευσιν αὐτῶν), ἄνδρας ὁμοῦ καὶ γυναῖκας, μετὰ δὴ τὸ κορεσθῆναι («ἐν πλησμονῃ τοι Κύπρις» 135 ᾗ φασι) τὸ καταισχῦνον αὐτῶν τὴν πορνικὴν ταύτην διακαιοσύνην, ἐκποδὼν ποιησαμένους φῶς τῇ τοῦ λύχνου περιτροπῇ, μίγυνυσθαι, ὅπως ἐθέλοιεν, αἷς βούλοιντο, μελετήσαντας δὲ ἐν τοιαύτῃ ἀγάπῃ τὴν κοινωνίαν, μεθ’ ἡμέραν ἤδη παρ’ ὧν ἄν ἐθελήσωσι γυναικῶν ἀπαιτεῖν τῆν τοῦ Καρποκρατείου, οὐ γὰρ θέμις εἰπεῖν θείου, νόμου ὑπακοήν. τοιαῦτα δὲ οἶμαι ταῖς κυνῶν καὶ συῶν καὶ τράγων λαγνείαις νομοθετεῖν τὸν Καρποκράτην ἔδει.

3.2.10.1. These are the things the noble Carpocratians teach! It is said that they, along with other eager competitors in the same vices, gather for banquets (for I myself would not call their gathering a love feast). Μen together with women (and), after being stuffed full—in satiation, as they say, there is Cypris—they remove the light that would shame that prostituted justice of theirs by flipping over the lamp. They have sex however they please, with whatever women they want, taking great care of “communality” in this sort of love feast. After daybreak, they again demand among the women whomever they want, in obedience to the Carpocratian—for it would be unholy to say divine—law. Such practices, in my opinion, Carpocrates should have legislated for the lasciviousness of dogs, pigs, and goats.

Commentary

Here Clement conveyed rumor, introduced by φασί (“they say”). In so doing, he recycled accusations that were hurled at all Christians. Justin Martyr wrote, “If indeed they [his Christian opponents] practice those reprehensible deeds touted like legends—the overturning of lamps, pell-mell sex acts … we do not know” (1 Apol. 26.7). In his Dialogue with Trypho 10.1, Justin admitted “not what you people have believed about us, … that after our solemn feast blow out the lights and roll around in sacrilegious acts of intercourse.” A generation later, Tertullian (Apol. 7.1) revealed: “We are said to commit incest after our dinner parties, when the dogs overturn the lamps—acting as our pimps, to be sure, in the darkness, procuring a veil of shame for our impious lusts. This is the perpetual charge” (cf. 8.3, 7). Minucius Felix (Oct. 9.6–7) offered the longest description, speaking through the lips of a fictionalized enemy:

They [Christians] gather to the feast on a solemn day with all their children, sisters, mothers, people of every sex and every age. There, after much feasting, when the banquet heats up and the flame of incestuous lust alights for these drunks, a dog tied to the lamp, by the throwing of a piece of unwanted meat beyond his leash, starts up with a leap. Then, when the light of their common knowledge is overturned, couplings of unspeakable lust in the shameless dark involve them in allotments unknown. Not all works, however, are unknown. All works are known to be incestuous, since by the assent of all, each one seeks whatever can happen.

Origen attributed this rumor to certain Jews who said that Christians “snuff out the light and each man has sexual intercourse with the first woman he meets” (Cels. 6.27; cf. 6.40). Eusebius (HE 4.7.11) followed Clement when he blamed the rumor on Carpocratians: “In this way … it happened that an impious and incredibly absurd suspicion was spread among unbelievers about us, to the effect that we engaged in sacrilegious sex acts with mothers and sisters.”¹³⁶ Clement may or may not have been the first to transfer this charge against Christians to Carpocratians more specifically.

It is worth noting that Epiphanes no longer appears in Clement’s remark here. He has been absorbed into the larger group—or rather groups of licentious Christians—with the nuances of his own views dissolved. Clement was vague, perhaps deliberately, when he spoke of “other eager competitors in the same vices” (cf. Clement, Paed. 3.3.21.4). These “competitors” were likely not Carpocratians at all.

The language of “love feasts” or agape meals could have been taken from the Carpocratians. One suspects, however, that the language comes from Clement himself, who was anticipating his citation of the epistle of Jude: “they are reefs at your love feasts” (v. 12). Agape meals were early Christian feasts that involved the celebration of the Eucharist (Ignatius, Smyrneans 8.2, Epistula Apostolorum 15.7; Tertullian, Apol. 39.16; Jejun. 17.2–3).

To understand what Clement meant by agape meals, it is best to focus on his own usage. In his Pedagogue, Clement remarked that “some dare to call their feasts ‘agape’ meals,” but they insult the name of Christ (Paed. 2.1.4.3–4). Clement defined agape as “celestial nourishment, the feast of the Logos … If you love the Lord your God and your neighbor, there is a heavenly feast in heaven.” He continued:

The one eating this meal, the meal of true realities, will possess the kingdom of God, having set their minds here on the holy assembly of agape, the heavenly church. Therefore, agape is a pure matter and worthy of God, and the function of agape is sharing. “Agape is mindfulness for education,” Wisdom says, “and the keeping of her laws” (Wisd 6:19). The festivities here have a spark of agape, when one is conditioned away from ordinary to eternal nourishment.

(Paed. 2.1.5.3–2.1.7.3)

In the Stromateis, Clement observed concerning a vague group of opponents:

They endure everything and stir up all good, as they say, though they act impiously by disbelieving the scriptures, rather than changing, due to their competitive love of heresy, and their acclaimed precedence among the churches, on account of which they welcome the best seats in the symposia of their falsely-called agape.

(Strom. 7.16.98.2)

Apparently at least one group of Clement’s opponents—not necessarily the Carpocratians—called their communal feast an “agape.” Clement took exception to this word, or his opponents’ use of it, in part because Jesus in the gospels did not refer to the Christian communal meal as an agape. The Alexandrian also accused his opponents of too much luxury and culinary variety in their agapes.

Yet Clement did not entirely reject the term “agape.” He spiritualized it to refer to “celestial nourishment,” “the feast of the Logos,” “a meal of true realities.” Christian dinners or suppers have a spark of agape when the people who celebrate the meal pursue simplicity and are conditioned to accept heavenly nourishment (Clement’s own teaching or something analogous to it).¹³⁷

Satiety, for Clement, led to sexual desire, symbolized by “Cypris” aka Aphrodite (Euripides quoted by Plutarch, Aetia physica 917b and by Athenaeus, Deipn. 6.270c). Sexual desire, accordingly, was not spontaenous. The “justice” of Epiphanes was “prostituted” (πορνική), a law not of nature, but of “Carpocrates”—the very man whom Clement never actually quoted. In this way, Clement polemically limited the “communality” of Carpocratians to the “community of women.” Epiphanes, however, urged “the sharing of all equally”—which would include “the community of men” (κοινωνία ἀνδρῶν).

Text and translation

3.2.10.2. δοκεῖ δέ μοι καὶ τοῦ Πλάτωνος παρακηκοέναι ἐν τῇ Πολιτείᾳ φαμένου κοινὰς εἶναι τὰς γυναῖκας πάντων, κοινὰς μὲν τὰς πρὸ τοῦ γάμου τῶν αἰτεῖσθαι μελλόντων, καθάπερ καὶ τὸ θέατρον κοινὸν τῶν θεωμένων φάσκοντος, τοῦ προκαταλαβόντος δὲ ἑκάστην ἑκάστου. εἶναι καὶ οὐκέτι κοινὴν τὴν γεγαμημένην.

3.2.10.2. It seems to me, moreover, that he misunderstood Plato saying in the Republic that women were common to all. They were common before marriage, with regard to those who would ask them (for marriage) in the future. Just as the theater is common to the spectators, each woman is common to each man who asks for her hand ahead of time. As a married woman, she is no longer common.

Commentary

This point returns us to Clement’s initial charge in Stromata 3.2.5.1, that the followers of Carpocrates and Epiphanes determined that “wives were common.” Although Clement did not mention this point at the beginning of his discussion, he here (belatedly) acknowledged that Epiphanes had a basis for his ideas in Plato’s Republic (cf. Strom. 6.2.24.5). Epiphanes himself—let alone Carpocrates—never used the phrase “community of wives,” from what we can tell, and never appealed directly to Plato’s Republic. Still, the Republic was likely to have been part of Epiphanes’s intellectual formation.

In this classic work, Plato—speaking through the voice of his teacher Socrates—laid the plans for an ideal city. Part of the plan was to introduce a system of eugenics in which the best men of the guardian class bred with the best women based on a (governmentally manipulated) system of allotment.¹³⁸ The marriages, though sacred, were not permanent. After men and women passed their prime, they were allowed to have sex with whomever they pleased, as long as no children were raised from these unions. Children of legitimate unions were brought up in common by the community of “guardians” as a whole. Sex with mothers and daughters was prohibited, but in rare instances, marriage with sisters was allowed (Resp. 461e).¹³⁹

There are serious differences between the views of Plato and Epiphanes. Epiphanes was not concerned with eugenics, a class-based society, or the constitution of an ideal city. He did not make concrete recommendations about sharing property (let alone wives). These differences lead one to suspect that Epiphanes did not in fact very much lean on Plato’s Republic.¹⁴⁰ As Le Boulluec points out, none of Epiphanes’s “arguments in favor of the community of women are properly Platonic, not the equal provision of goods assured by God, not the model of animal generation, not the rejection of written law, or the universality of desire.”¹⁴¹

As Gaca has argued, other Hellenistic sources are better candidates for having influenced Epiphanes. Reportedly, Zeno of Citium (founder of the Stoic school), Chrysippus (third head of the Stoic school), and Diogenes the Cynic also recommended political systems in which women/wives were held in common (with Chrysippus clarifying that wives should be held in common among sages).¹⁴² Their works do not survive except in fragments and summaries. Both Cynics and Stoics attempted to live according to nature and challenged societal taboos. In attempting to determine Epiphanes’s philosophical sources, it would be an error to contrast Cynic and Stoic influence.¹⁴³ At the same time, we know more about Zeno’s famous work, also called Republic, than about the homonymous work of Diogenes. It seems best, then, to focus on Zeno.

Zeno’s Republic, it seems, fell into the broad genre of the “philosopher’s dream” by setting out “how things ought to be,” or “how things would be if people were wise.”¹⁴⁴ Plutarch said that Zeno wrote “as if imagining a dream or vision (ὄναρ ἤ εἴδωλον) of philosophical lawfulness and political organization” (Alex. fort. 329b). Whether it was a thought experiment or actual recommendation, Zeno’s Republic was attacked as “impious” by Philodemus the Epicurean, and offensive passages were removed—and then again restored—in the first century BCE.¹⁴⁵ Among the deletions was perhaps the “community of wives,” which we know was criticized by the Skeptic philosopher Cassius (DL, Vita Phil. 7.32–4).¹⁴⁶ Clement himself noted that the Stoics of his day “say that the first Zeno wrote certain things which they are reluctant to give to their pupils to read unless they have first proved themselves to be genuine philosophers” (Strom. 5.9.58.2, trans. LS).¹⁴⁷ Zeno and Chrysippus did not advocate a “community of wives” to support unrestrained lust. Like Plato, later philosophers were interested in recommending a political system that maximized social cohesion and minimized disharmony based on jealousy and competition between families (DL, Vita Phil. 7.131).¹⁴⁸

Unlike Aristotle (Pol. 2.2–4), Clement did not provide a systematic attack of Plato’s “community of women/wives,” because he did not think that Plato proposed such a system. The fact that wives/women were common (e.g., Resp. 457d, τὰς γυναῖκας … πάσας εἶναι κοινάς) referred, so Clement, to women before marriage. In this interpretation, Clement may have depended on later Stoic arguments (e.g., Epictetus, Diatr. 2.4.8–10; Epictetus frag. 15), according to which women are common by nature before they have been apportioned by the “legislator” for marriage.¹⁴⁹Although Clement did not always follow Plato, he was eager to keep him on his side. Plato was a reputed disciple of Moses (Paed. 2.10.90.4, 3.10.54.2).¹⁵⁰ For Clement, Plato’s city was nothing less than a “model laid up in heaven” (παράδειγμα … ἐν οὐρανῷ κειμένην, Strom. 4.26.172.3, paraphrasing Plato, Resp. 592a–b; cf. Phil 3:20). It was unthinkable, for Clement, that Plato recommended a political system that undermined monogamy.

Text and translation

3.2.11.1. Ξάνθος δὲ ἐν τοῖς ἐπιγραφομένοις Μαγικοῖς «†μίγνυνται δὲ» φησὶν, «οἱ Μάγοι μητράσι καὶ θυγατράσι καὶ ἀδελφαῖς μίγνυσθαι θεμιτὸν εἶναι. κοινάς τε εἶναι τὰς γυναῖκας οὐ βίᾳ καὶ λάθρᾳ, ἀλλὰ συναινούντων ἀμφοτέρων, ὅταν θέλῃ γῆμαι ὁ ἕτερος τὴν τοῦ ἑτέρου.»

3.211.1. Xanthos in his book entitled Matters of the Magi claims that, “The magi hold it lawful to have sex with mothers and daughters and sisters. And the women are common—not by force and in secret. Rather, both parties agree when one man wants to marry another’s wife.”

Commentary

Xanthos was an ancient historian who flourished around 450 BCE. He came from the region of Lydia in what is now western Turkey. He wrote a history of his country, the Lydiaka, of which only fragments remain (FGrH 765F 12–30). The work entitled On the Magi may have been a section of the Lydiaka or a separate work.¹⁵¹

The report about Persians—in particular, the Persian nobility—practicing next-of-kin marriage is widespread (Herodotus, Hist. 3.31; Philo, Spec. leg. 3.13; Catullus 90; Plutarch, Artaxerxes 2, 11–13, 18–19). Clement’s contemporary Tertullian would falsely claim, citing Ctesias (BNJ 688 F 44ab), that Persians in general had sex with their mothers—a distortion repeated in the echo chamber of anti-Persian rhetoric (Nat.1.16.4; cf. Apol. 9.16; Tatian, Or. 28; Minucius Felix, Octavius 31.3; Sextus Empiricus, Pyr. 3.205; Strabo, Geogr. 15.3.20; Eusebius, Praep. Ev. 6.10.16 [reporting Bardaisan]).¹⁵²

Nowhere else is it attested, however, that the Magi (ancient Persian priests)—or Persians in general—held wives in common. In fact, this tradition conflicts with the ancient stereotype that Persian men were extremely jealous of their wives and concubines (Plutarch, Artaxerxes 27.1; Themistocles 26.3–4). It also conflicts with the tradition—which Clement himself reported—that the Magi abstain from sex (Strom. 3.6.48.3). Clement elsewhere reported only that when Persian princes “reach maturity, they have sex with sisters, mothers, and married wives, together with innumerable concubines just like wild boars are practiced in sex” (Paed. 1.7.55). Clement probably did not invent the “community of wives” tradition for the Magi. More likely, he misunderstood, misreported, or passed on an already misinformed source. This source was not necessarily Xanthos’s work, but an intervening text.¹⁵³ Why Clement mentioned Xanthos (FGrH 765 F 31) is not clear. Elsewhere he referenced traditions of the Magi (Protr. 4.58.3, 5.65.1) and quoted Xanthos for a chronological reference (Strom. 1.21.131.7).

Conceivably, it could have been Epiphanes who made the reference to Xanthos. In this case, the Magi would be a positive example of living by the Stoic rule of nature, not counting what is indifferent by nature. Chrysippus, for instance, was said to have permitted marriage with mothers, siblings, and children (Plutarch, Stoic. Rep. 1044f; DL, Vita Phil. 7.188; Sextus Empiricus, Pyr. 3.246; cf. Origen, Cels. 4.45; Epiphanius, De fide 9.43). Nevertheless, Epiphanes never mentioned or sought to justify sexual relations with kin. It seems more likely, then, that Clement used Xanthos independently.

Text and translation

ἐπὶ τούτων οἶμαι καὶ τῶν ὁμοίων αἱρέσεων προφητικῶς Ἰούδαν ἐν τῇ ἐπιστολῇ εἰρηκέναι· «ὁμοίως μέντοι καὶ οὗτοι ἐνυπνιαζόμενοι» (οὐ γὰρ ὕπαρ τῇ ἀλθηείᾳ ἐπιβάλλουσιν) ἕως «καὶ τὸ στόμα αὐτῶν λαλεῖ ὑπέρογκα.»

Against these people and like heresies, I think, Jude prophesied in his epistle “Likewise those who dream” … (for they do not assault the truth in a waking state) until “and their mouths utter enormities.”

Commentary

Clement indicated that, in his view, Carpocratians are to be grouped with “like heresies,” which apparently belonged to Clement’s larger category of “licentious heresies” (see “The Passage in the Context of the Stromata” above).

Clement’s truncated quote refers to the New Testament book of Jude 8–16a, which can be translated as follows:

Similar indeed are these people, dreamers. They defile the flesh, reject lordship, and insult glories. Michael the archangel, when disputing with the devil, debated about the body of Moses. He did not dare to bring a judgment of insult, but said, “the Lord censure you.” These people, however, insult what they do not understand, while what they naturally know, like stupid beasts, corrupts them. Woe to them, for they travel in the way of Cain, and by the deceit of Balaam they are agog for payment, and by the insubordination of Korah they are destroyed. These are those reefs in your love feasts, feasting with you without fear, shepherding themselves, clouds without moisture brought across by winds, dwindling trees, twice fruitless, dead and uprooted; they are wild waves of the seas spewing out the foam of their own shame; wandering stars, for whom the blackness of the eternal dark is preserved. Enoch, the seventh from Adam prophesied about them, saying, “Behold the Lord came among his myriads of holy ones to perform judgment against all and to reprove every soul about all their works of impiety which they did, and about all hard things they said against him as impious sinners.” These are the complainers and faultfinders, walking according to their own desires, and their mouths utter enormities.

Clement’s focus here may have been v. 12, where the opponents are called “reefs (σπιλάδες) in your love feasts (ἐν ταῖς ἀγάπαις)” (cf. 2 Pet 2:13).¹⁵⁴ The application of the verse indicates that Clement’s opponents were practicing Christian rituals. It may also imply that Carpocratians were part of Clement’s own love feasts (cf. his comment about Carpocratians and his ecclesial registry, 3.2.8.4). Clement may also have wanted to underscore v. 10, where what the opponents “naturally” know (φυσικῶς … ἐπίστανται) corrupts them. Epiphanes appealed to natural law as a basis for his convictions and illustrated it by the actions of animals.

Morton Smith held that the “notion that Jude refers to the sect [of the Carpocratians] may be correct.” Such a claim would presuppose that Jude was written between about 120 and 150 CE in Alexandria, which may indeed be correct.¹⁵⁵ Perhaps it is safer to accept Smith’s more general statement that “we must suppose the general picture given by Jude bore some similarity to Carpocratianism.”¹⁵⁶ It would be easy to reject Smith’s claim, given Jude’s stereotyped rhetoric. Accusations of licentiousness were exceedingly common in vituperative speech. Only someone who assumed that the Carpocratians were licentious, as Clement did, would make a connection with Jude. Yet if Clement thought that Carpocratians were licentious, then perhaps the author of Jude did as well.

>

Following the rhetoric of Jude, Clement associated the Carpocratians with animals, saying that Carpocrates—again conflated with and replacing Epiphanes—should have legislated for dogs, pigs, and goats (3.2.10.1).¹⁵⁷ In his Adumbrationes, Clement commented on Jude 10: “It means that they eat, drink, and indulge in sex … which are in common with animals who lack reason.”¹⁵⁸ The rhetorical practice of animalizing opponents is common in Clement (e.g., Paed. 2.10.98.3; Strom. 3.17.102.3).¹⁵⁹

Clement’s intervening comment (οὐ γὰρ ὕπαρ τῇ ἀλθηείᾳ ἐπιβάλλουσιν; translated above as, “they do not assault the truth in a waking state”) could also mean that “they do not devote themselves to truth in (waking) reality.” Compare Clement’s Paedagogue 2.10.106.1, where his unnamed and vague opponents “must have journeyed far from truth; they do no more than daydream about the nature of beauty, according to imagination, not knowledge” (πόρρω τῆς ἀληθείας ἀποικιστέον, δόξῃ οὐκ ἐπιστήμῃ ὀνειροπολοῦντας τοῦ καλοῦ τὴν φύσιν).¹⁶⁰ In his Adumbrationes, Clement commented on ἐνυπνιαζόμενοι in Jude 8: “it refers to those who dream by their fantasizing, considering their lust and fallen desires to be good, not what is truly good and superior to good.”¹⁶¹ If Carpocratians were in view here, they are not directly mentioned.

For the final summary and profile of Epiphanes, readers should skip ahead to the Conclusion. For the present, I turn to the report on Epiphanes’s father Carpocrates as conveyed by Irenaeus and his heirs.

Notes

1. Otto Stählin and Ursula Treu, ed., Clemens Alexandrinus: Protrepticus und Paedagogus, 3rd ed., GCS 12 (Berlin: Akademie, 1972), XXXIX–XLII, XLVII–LI; Stählin, Früchtel, and Ursula Treu, ed. Clemens Alexandrinus Stromata I–VI, 4th ed., GCS 15 (Berlin: Akademie, 1985), VII–XV (hereafter GCS 15).

2. GCS 15:197–200.

3. Descourtieux and Le Boulluec, ed. Clément d’Alexandrie, Les Stromates. Stromate III, SC 608 (Paris: Cerf, 2020) (hereafter SC 608).

4. Bogdan Bucur, “The Other Clement of Alexandria: Cosmic Hierarchy and Interiorized Apocalypticism,” VC 60, no. 3 (August 2006): 251–68; Bucur, “The Place of the Hypotyposeis in the Clementine Corpus: An Apology for the ‘Other Clement of Alexandria,’” JECS 17, no. 3 (2009): 313–35; Marco Rizzi, “The End of Stromateis VII and Clement’s Literary Project,” in The Seventh Book of the Stromateis, ed. Matyáš Havrda, Vít Hušek, and Jana Plátová, VCSup 117 (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 299–311.

5. J.M.F. Heath, Clement of Alexandria and the Shape of Christian Literary Practice: Miscellany and the Transformation of Greco-Roman Writing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020).

6. André Méhat, Étude sur les ‘Stromates’ de Clément d’Alexandrie (Pari: de Seuil, 1966), 398–420.

7. On the collocation ἀδιαφορῶς ζῆν, cf. Aristo of Chios in DL, Vita Phil. 7.160. The binary framing of licentious vs. encratite has a precedent in Irenaeus, AH 1.6.2; 1.13.2–7; 1.24.5; 1.25.3–4; 1.26.3; 1.28.2.

8. It is Clement who worked with the concept of indifference, and he strongly denied that one should live indifferently with respect to pleasure (John R. Donahue, “Stoic Indifferents and Christian Indifference in Clement of Alexandria,” Traditio 19 [1963]: 438–46).

9. Smith, CA, 274.

10. Clement acknowledged that he was not interested in providing a detailed investigation of his Christian opponents. He used his dualistic categories “to avoid recalling the subject of so many absurd heresies, making an excessively minute investigation (ἵν’ οὖν μὴ ἐπὶ πλεῖον ὀνυχίζοντες)” (Strom. 3.5.40.1).

11. Eugène De Faye, Gnostiques et Gnosticisme: Études critique des documents du gnosticisme chrétien aux IIe et IIIe siècles (Paris: Leroux, 1913), 391–406; Liboron, Karpokratianische Gnosis, 26; Méhat, Étude, 402–4; Franco Bolgiani, “La polemica di Clemente Alessandrino contro gli Gnostici libertini nel III libro degli ‘Stromati,’” Studi e Materiali di Storia delle Religioni 38 (1967): 86–136; Alain Le Boulluec, La notion d’hérésie dans la literature grecque, IIe–IIIe siècles, 2 vols. (Paris: Études augustiniennes, 1985), 2.333–6; Filoramo, A History of Gnosticism, 173–89; Peter (Panayiotis) Karavites, Evil, Freedom, and the Road to Perfection in Clement of Alexandria, VCSup 43 (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 87; Stroumsa, “Gnostic Justice,” 257. Despite important disclaimers, Piotr Ashwin-Siejkowski continues to follow Clementine categories in Clement of Alexandria: A Project of Christian Perfection (London: T&T Clark, 2008), 126–40, as does Judith L. Kovacs “Was Paul an Antinomian, a Radical Ascetic, or a Sober Married Man? Exegetical Debates in Clement of Alexandria’s Stromateis 3” in Asceticism and Exegesis in Early Christianity: The Reception of New Testament Texts in Ancient Ascetic Discourses, ed. H.-U. Weidemann (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013), 186–202.

12. Clement elsewhere attacked the followers of perceived founders (e.g., Valentinus and Basilides), though this distinction typically did not allow the founders to escape blame (e.g., Strom. 3.1.1.1).

13. Pétrement, Pace Separate God, 348; Emmanouela Grypeou, “Das vollkommene Pascha”: Gnostische Bibelexegese und Ethik (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2005), 138.

14. Andrew Erskine, Hellenistic Stoa: Political Thought and Action (London: Bristol Classical Press, 2011), 112.

15. See the commentary on 3.2.10.1 later.

16. Some scholars think that copies of Irenaeus’s AH arrived in Egypt by the turn of the third century. They do so on the basis of a fragment of Irenaeus’s Against Heresies found at Oxyrhynchus (P.Oxy 405), which Grenfell and Hunt dated to roughly that time (Lincoln H. Blumell and Thomas A. Wayment, eds., Christian Oxyrhynchus: Texts, Documents, and Sources [Waco: Baylor University Press, 2015], 287–90). Yet caution is needed. Perhaps this papyrus was in Rome during the late second century and only came to Egypt in the fourth century or later. In his surviving writings, Clement never directly quoted Irenaeus.

17. Kok, “Morton Smith and the Carpocratians,” 601.

18. Löhr, “Epiphanes’ Schrift,” 25. Pace Whitley, “Blasphemy,” 113 (“given the vigor with which Epiphanes defends and justifies the teachings, it is likely that the group did practice some communalism of wives”). Peter Lampe also gives the impression that the Carpocratians in Rome disregarded “property laws and other social conventions” (From Paul to Valentinus: Christians at Rome in the First Two Centuries, ed. Marshall Johnson, trans. Michael Steinhauser [Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003], 319). There is no evidence of this.

19. Taylor G. Petrey, “Gender and the History of Sexuality in Clement of Alexandria and Epiphanes,” Early Christianity 9 (2018): 319–48 at 328.

20. Clement’s opponents wear the name of Christ (Strom. 1.3.3.4; cf. 3.6.46.4).

21. Whitley, “Blasphemy,” 125.

22. S.R.F. Price, “Gods and Emperors: The Greek Language of the Roman Imperial Cult,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 104 (1984): 79–95 at 86–7. The name “Epiphanes” is attested 48 times according to the online Lexicon of Greek Personal Names, http://clas-lgpn2.classics.ox.ac.uk, visited on June 30, 2021.

23. The name “Alexandreia” is attested 32 times according to the online Lexicon of Greek Personal Names, http://clas-lgpn2.classics.ox.ac.uk/lexname/nAlexa1ndreia, visited on June 30, 2021. The name “Alexandria” is not attested. ΑΛΕΧΑΝΔΡΕΙΑ could easily become ΑΛΕΧΑΝΔΡΙΑ via itacism.

24. E.g., Kraft, “Gab es,” 440.

25. Erskine, Hellenistic Stoa, 9–15; Robert Bees, Zenons Politeia (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 7–9, 26.

26. Luigi Moretti, ed., Inscriptiones Graecae Urbis Romae III (Rome: Italian Institute for Ancient History, 1990), §1239. See further Georg Biedermann, Die Insel Kephallenia im Altertum (Munich: F. Straub, 1887), 38–44, 55–61, 69–71.

27. Franz Oehler, ed., Corporis Haeresiologici tomus primus continens scriptores haereseologicos minores Latinos (Berlin: Asher, 1856), 234–5.

28. So Markschies, “Carpocrates,” 119.

29. The inscription can be found in Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae, ed. Hermann Dessau, 3 vols. (Berlin: Weidmann, 1974), §3474. Florent Heintz accused Justin of deliberate falsification in his report (Simon “Le magician”: Actes 8, 5–25 et l’accusation de magie contre les prophètes thaumaturges dans l’antiquité [Paris: Gabalda, 1997], 121). Irenaeus (AH 1.23.1), Tertullian (Apol. 13.9), and Eusebius (HE 2.13) followed Justin without question.

30. Varro, Latin Language 5.66. See further Roger D. Woodard, Indo-European Sacred Space: Vedic and Roman Cult (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006), 184–9.

31. Scholten, “Karpokrates,” col. 176.

32. Sarah B. Pomeroy, Pythagorean Women: Their History and Writings (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013), 6.

33. Inscriptiones Graecae Volumen XII, ed. Dimitris Bosnakis and Klaus Hallof (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2012), 3.330, lines 10–15. A translation can be found in Richard A. Ascough, Philip A. Harland, and John S. Kloppenborg, eds., Associations in the Greco-Roman World (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2012), 145–50. See further Pierre Boyancé, Le Culte des Muses chez les philosophes grecs: Études d’histoire et de psychologie religieuses (Paris: Boccard, 1936), 330–43; Andreas Wittenburg, Il testamento di Epikteta (Trieste: Bernardi, 1990); Hans-Josef Klauck, Religious Context of Early Christianity: A Guide to Graeco-Roman Religions (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000), 47–8; Stanley K. Stowers, “Locating the Religion of Associations,” in Re-making the World: Essays in Honor of Karen L. King, ed. Taylor G. Petrey (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2019), 301–24 at 307–8.

34. Epiphanius, in an apparent attempt to paraphrase Clement, omitted “birthday deification” but added “(mystery) rites” (τελετάς) in honor of Epiphanes (Pan. 32.3.6), perhaps following Wisd 14:15.

35. John Ferguson, Clement of Alexandria Stromateis Books One to Three, FC 85 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1991), 259. Similarly, Henry Chadwick and John Ernest Leonard Oulton render the phrase: “The Cephallenians … celebrate with sacrifices the day when Epiphanes became a god as his birthday” (Alexandrian Christianity [London: SCM Press, 1954], 42). Marcel Caster translated: “celebrant par un sacrifice l’anniversaire de l’apothéose d’Épiphane” (SC 608:71), here following Boyancé, Le culte des Muses, 293–4 (SC 608:347). Cf. also Seneca, Ep. 102.26.

36. Following LSJ ῥυτός (Α). The word can mean “dragged/hauled” (of large stones) or “flowing.” Boyancé thought that “flowing” stones referred to pumice, a material used in (some) temples of the Muses to make them resemble caves (Le culte des Muses, 293, n.1, citing Pliny, Nat. 36.154). But even if Boyancé was right, it was the shrine, not the mouseion, which was made of ῥυτῶν λίθων—and these were evidently not the same building. See further Pierre Chantraine, Dictionnaire Étymologique de la Langue Grecque: Histoire des Mots, 5 vols. (Paris: Klincksieck, 1968), 4.980.

37. S.R.F. Price, Rituals and Power: The Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 207–33.

38. Leendert G. Westerink, ed., Anonymous Prolegomena to Platonic Philosophy (Dilton Marsh: Prometheus, 2011), 6.16–18. Cf. Porphyry, Vit. Plot. 15.1; Eusebius, Praep. Ev. 10.3.24. Epicurus also made provision for his own birthday celebration after his death (DL, Vita Phil. 10.18).

39. Wilhelm Dittenberger, ed., Orientis Graeci Inscriptiones Selectae (OGIS) (Leipzig: Herzel, 1903), 456 (on Augustus’s monthly birthday in Mytilene, he was offered the same sacrifices as were offered to Zeus). See further Emil Schürer, “Zu 2 Mcc 6,7 (monatliche Geburtstagsfeier),” ZNW 2 (1901): 48–52; Georg Wissowa, “Monatliche Geburtstagsfeier,” Hermes 37 (1902): 157–9; Price, Rituals and Power, 101–32, esp. 102–7.

40. Dittenberger, OGIS I.164–5, §90.

41. Walter F. Snyder, “Hemerai Sebastai,” Aegyptus 16 (1938): 197–233 at 215–16.

42. Henning Wrede, Consecratio in formam deorum: Vergöttlichte Privatpersonen in der römischen Kaiserzeit (Mainz am Rhein: Philipp von Zabern, 1981); Bruno Currie, Pindar and the Cult of Heroes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Christopher P. Jones, New Heroes in Antiquity: From Achilles to Antinoos (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 48–65; Walter Burkert, Griechische religion der archaischen und klassischen Epoche, 2nd ed. (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2011), 311–19; Gwynaeth McIntyre, “Deification as Consolation: The Divine Children of the Roman Imperial Family,” Historia 62, no. 2 (2013): 224–40; Veit Rosenberger, “Coping with Death: Private Deification in the Roman Empire,” in Burial Rituals, Ideas of Afterlife, and the Individual in the Hellenistic World and the Roman Empire, ed. Katharina Waldner, Richard Gordon, and Wolfgang Spickermann (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2016), 109–24.

43. Pausanias, Descr. 8.9.7–8; 8.10.1; Dio Cassius, Roman History 69.11.2–4; SHA Hadrian 14.5–7. See further Anthony Everitt, Hadrian and the Triumph of Rome (London: Head of Zeus, 2013), chap. XXII; Jones, New Heroes, 75–83; Royston Lambert, Beloved and God: The Story of Hadrian and Antinous (Secaucus: Meadowland, 1984), 184–97; Peter Kuhlmann, Religion und Erinnerung: Die Religionspolitik Kaiser Hadrians und ihre Rezeption in der antiken Literatur (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2002), 197–240. Cult statues of Antinous can be found in R.R.R. Smith, Antinous: Boy Made God (Oxford: Ashmolean, 2018), 41.

44. See further Åke Fridh, “Sacellum, Sacrarium, Fanum, and Related Terms,” in Greek and Latin Studies in Memory of Cajus Fabricius, ed. Sven-Tage Teodorssen (Göteborg: University of Göteborg, 1990), 173–87 at 185.

45. See further Pierre Boyancé, “L’apothéose de Tullia,” Revue de Études Ancienne 46 (1944): 179–84; John J. Sullivan, “Consecratio in Cicero,” Classical Weekly 37, no. 14 (1944): 157–9; John Bodel, “Monumental Villas and Villa Monuments,” Journal of Roman Archaeology 10 (1997): 5–35 at 22–3; Spencer Cole, Cicero and the Rise of Deification at Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 2–6; Walter Englert, “Fanum and Philosophy: Cicero and the Death of Tullia,” Ciceroniana Online I, no. 1 (2017): 41–66.

46. Cicero quoted in Lactantius, Inst. 1.15; cf. Cicero, Tusc. 1.12.28; Nat. d. 2.24.62. See further Han Baltussen, “Cicero’s Consolatio ad se: Character, Purpose and Impact of a Curious Treatise,” in Greek and Roman Consolations: Eight Studies of a Tradition and Its Afterlife, ed. Han Baltussen (Swansea: Classical Press of Wales, 2013), 67–91.

47. Here I reuse language from my Found Christianities: Remaking the World of the Second Century (London: T&T Clark, 2022), 125. For the deification of learned people and in particular the young, see Henry-Irénée Marrou, MOUSIKOS ANÊR: Étude sur les scènes de la vie intellectuelle figurant sur les monuments funéraires romains (Rome: L’erma, 1964), 197–207; 231–57; Paul Zanker, The Mask of Socrates: The Image of the Intellectual in Antiquity, trans. Alan Shapiro (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 276.

48. Norman Russell, The Doctrine of Deification in the Greek Patristic Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 122–3.

49. Pétrement, Separate God, 349. Similarly, Christopher P. Jones, Between Pagan and Christian (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), 43.

50. Pétrement, Separate God, 518, n.7.

51. Kraft, “Gab es,” 439; Jones, Pace Between Pagan, 44.

52. M. David Litwa, Iesus Deus: The Early Christian Depiction of Jesus as a Mediterranean God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2014).

53. So Löhr, DGWE, 241; Scholten, “Karpokrates,” RAC 20, col. 182; Alfons Fürst, Christentum als Intellektuellen-religion: Die Anfänge des Christentums in Alexandria (Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 2007), 24.

54. Filoramo, Pace A History, 161.

55. On encyclical paideia, see Philo, Congr.; Plutarch, [Lib. ed.]; Clement, Strom. 6.19.80.1–4. See further Henri-Irénée Marrou, A History of Education in Antiquity (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1982), 69–76 and 176–7; Alan Mendelson, Secular Education in Philo of Alexandria (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1982); Robert M. Grant, “Carpocratians and the Curriculum: Irenaeus’s Reply,” HTR 79 (1986): 127–36; Ilsetraut Hadot, Arts libéraux et philosophie dans la pensée antique (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1984), esp. 263–93; Teresa Morgan, Literate Education in the Hellenistic and Roman World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 1–89; D.A. Russell, “Arts and Sciences in Ancient Education,” Greece and Rome 36 (2010): 210–25; Robert G.T. Edwards, “Clement of Alexandria’s Gnostic Exposition of the Decalogue,” JECS 23, no. 4 (2015): 501–28; George Boys-Stones, ed., Platonist Philosophy 80 BC to AD 250: An Introduction and Collection of Sources in Translation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 437–55.

56. Summaries of Middle Platonism can be found in Alcinous, Epit., Ref. 1.19; Apuleius, Plato and His Doctrine.

57. For Clement’s knowledge of Pythagorean philosophy, see Eugene Afonasin, “The Pythagorean Way of Life in Clement of Alexandria and Iamblichus,” in Iamblichus and the Foundations of Late Platonism, ed. Eugene Afonasin, John Dillon, and John F. Finamore (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 13–26; Jennifer Otto, “Philo Judaeus? A Re-evaluation of Why Clement Calls Philo ‘The Pythagorean,’” SPhA 25 (2013): 115–38.

58. 4.43.4–13 and the briefer notice in CH 4.10–11. See further Robert M. Berchman, “The Categories of Being in Middle Platonism: Philo, Clement, and Origen of Alexandria,” in Ref. The School of Moses: Studies in Philo and Hellenistic Religion, ed. John Peter Kenney (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995), 98–140.

59. Simplicius, In Aristotelis physicorum libros commentaria, ed. Hermann Diels (Berlin: Reimer, 1892), 9, 181.10–30. Cf. Archytas, On First Principles in Stobaeus, Anthology 1.278–9. See further Dillon, Middle Platonists, 126–9.

60. Kalvesmaki, Theology of Arithmetic, 55.

61. The Refutator would later say the same of Valentinian thought (Ref. 6.21.1). See further Whittaker, “Self-Generating Principles in Second-Century Gnostic Systems,” in Rediscovery of Gnosticism: Proceedings of the International Conference on Gnosticism at Yale, New Haven, Connecticut, March 28–31, 1978, ed. Bentley Layton, 2 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1981), 1.176–89.

62. Annewies Van den Hoek, “Techniques of Quotation in Clement of Alexandria. A View of Ancient Literary Working Methods,” VC 50, no. 3 (1996): 223–43 at 233. This point was noticed by Smith, CA 79.

63. John M. Dillon and Wolfgang Polleichtner, eds., Iamblichus of Chalcis: The Letters, Edited with a Translation and Commentary (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2009), 4. As Dillon and Polleichtner point out (ibid., 61), it was Phocylides (quoted by Aristotle, Eth. Nic. 1129b27) who said that every virtue is summed up in justice.

64. Ashwin-Siejkowski, Clement, 134.

65. Arthur J. Pomeroy, ed., Arius Didymus: Epitome of Stoic Ethics (Atlanta: SBL Press, 1999), 14–16. See further Erskine, Hellenistic Stoa, 115–17; Gaca, Fornication, 280.

66. See further Julia Annas, The Morality of Happiness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 302–11.

67. See further E.R. Goodenough, “The Political Philosophy of Hellenistic Kingship,” Yale Classical Studies (1928): 55–102 at 86–8; Bruno Blumenfeld, The Political Paul: Democracy and Kingship in Paul’s Thought (London: Bloomsbury, 2004), 191–233, esp. 228–30.

68. See further Erwin Goodenough, By Light, Light: The Mystic Gospel of Hellenistic Judaism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1935), 64–8; Löhr, “Epiphanes’ Schrift,” 22–3; Valéry Laurand, “La justice chez Philon d’Alexandrie,” in L’amour de la justice, de la Septante à Thomas d’Aquin, 37–47; Françoise Frazier, “Le principe d’égalité chez Philon d’Alexandrie,” Ktèma 31 (2006): 291–308.

69. See further Karavites, Evil, 59–61.

70. “Communality is good,” Clement observed, “in terms of sharing money, food, and clothing, but these people impiously use the term ‘communality’ to refer to any kind of sexual engagement” (Strom. 3.4.27.2).

71. So Ashwin-Siejkowski, Clement, 130.

72. E.g., David L. Mealand, “Community of Goods and Utopian Allusions in Acts II–IV,” JTS 28, no. 1 (1977): 96–9.

73. Gerd Theissen, “Urchristlicher Liebeskommunismus: Zum ‘Sitz im Leben’ des Topos ἅπαντα κοινά in Apg 2,44 und 4,32,” in Texts and Contexts: Biblical Texts in Their Textual and Situational Contexts. Essays in Honor of Lars Hartman, ed. Tord Fornberg and David Hellholm (Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, 1995), 689–712; Justin Taylor, “The Community of Goods among the First Christians and Among the Essenes,” in Historical Perspectives: From the Hasmoneans to Bar Kokhba in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Proceedings of the Fourth International Symposium of the Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Related Literature, ed. David Goodblatt (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 147–61.

74. Walter T. Wilson, The Sentences of Sextus (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2012).

75. Robert Grant, Pace Early Christianity and Society: Seven Studies (London: Collins, 1978), 105.

76. Timothy Gantz, Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources, 2 vols. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), 1.30–4.

77. Richard L. Gordon and Martin Wallraff, “Sol,” in Brill’s New Pauly, ed. Hubert Cancik and Helmuth Schneider. Consulted online July 15, 2021, http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1574-9347_bnp_e1116380.

78. See further J. Bidez, La cité du monde et la cité du soleil chez les Stoïciens (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1932), 33–8.

79. Cf. the fusion of sun and creator seen in some Hermetic texts (SH 2A.14; 5.2; CH 16.5, 8).

80. Harold Attridge, First Century Cynicism in the Epistles of Heraclitus (Missoula: Scholars Press, 1976) (hereafter Attridge).

81. Jonas, The Gnostic Religion: The Message of the Alien God and the Beginnings of Christianity, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 1963), 51–6, 250–3.

82. Karavites, Pace Evil, 62; Gaca, Fornication, 273; cf. 7; Ashwin-Siejkowski, Clement, 132.

83. Gaca shows how the contrast between wise and fools was Stoic (DL, Vita Phil. 7.124; Plutarch, Comm. Not. 1062e–f; Cleanthes in Clement Strom. 5.3.17.6x; Stobaeus, Anthology 2.68.18–23 = LS 41I, cited in Fornication 284, n.24.) But the contrast appears in Paul as well (Rom 1:14).

84. For the notion of equality in Paul, see Dieter Georgi, Remembering the Poor: The History of Paul’s Collection for Jerusalem (Nashville: Abingdon, 1992), 84–91; Hans Dieter Betz, 2 Corinthians 8 and 9: A Commentary on Two Administrative Letters of the Apostle Paul (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985), 67–70; Petros Vassiliadis, “Equality and Justice in Classical Antiquity and in Paul: The Social Implications of the Pauline Collection,” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 36 (1992): 51–9; David E. Aune, “Galatians 3:28 and the Problem of Equality in the Church and Society,” in From Judaism to Christianity: Tradition and Transition. A Festschrift for Thomas H. Tobin, S.J., on the Occasion of His Sixty-Fifth Birthday, ed. Patricia Walters (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 153–84; Julien M. Ogereau, “The Jerusalem Collection as Κοινωνία: Paul’s Global Politics of Socio-Economic Equality and Solidarity,” NTS 58 (2012): 360–78; L.L. Welborn, “Paul’s Place in a First-Century Revival of the Discourse of ‘Equality,’” HTR 110, no. 4 (2017): 541–62.

85. See further William Desmond, The Cynics (Hoboken: Taylor and Francis, 2014), 132–61.

86. Malcolm Schofield, “Two Stoic Approaches to Justice,” Pace Justice and Generosity: Studies in Hellenistic Social and Political Philosophy: Proceedings of the Sixth Symposium Hellenisticum, ed. Malcolm Schofield and André Laks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 191–212 at 194.

87. See further Gerard Watson, “The Natural Law and Stoicism,” in Problems in Stoicism, ed. A.A. Long (London: Athlone Press, 1971), 216–38; Richard A. Horsley, “The Law of Nature in Philo and Cicero,” HTR 71 (1978): 35–59; Gisela Striker, ed., Essays on Hellenistic Epistemology and Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge Univeristy Press, 1996), 209–20; Phillip Mitsis, “Natural Law and Natural Right in Post-Aristotelian Philosophy: The Stoics and Their Critics,” ANRW II.36.7 (Berlin, 1994), 4812–50; Paul A. Vander Waerdt, “Zeno’s Republic and the Origins of Natural Law,” in The Socratic Movement, ed. Paul A. Vander Waerdt (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994), 272–308; Hindy Najman, “The Law of Nature and the Authority of Mosaic Law,” SPhA 11 (1999): 55–73; David T. Runia, Gregory E. Sterling, and Hindy Najman, Laws Stamped with the Seals of Nature: Law and Nature in Hellenistic Philosophy and Philo of Alexandria = SPhA 15 (Providence: Brown University Press, 2003); J.W. Martens, One God, One Law: Philo of Alexandria on the Mosaic and Greco-Roman Law (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 83–102.

88. Clement distinguished ἐπιθυμία from ὄρεξις. Ἐπιθυμία is non-rational and directed toward pleasure, whereas ὄρεξις is “a logical movement toward things necessary by nature” (ἐπὶ τῶν κατὰ φύσιν ἀναγκαίων λογικὴν ὑπάρχουσαν κίνησιν, Strom. 4.18.117.5). Clement could also refer to “civil and pure desires” (ἐπιθυμίας ἀστείους καὶ καθαράς) which exist in the living Lord” (Strom. 3.17.103.4). On natural law in Clement, see further Salvatore R.C. Lilla, of Alexandria: A Study in Christian Platonism and Gnosticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), 92–5.

89. Cf. 1 Clem. 20:4: “By his will and in the proper seasons, the fertile earth brings forth its rich abundance of nourishment for humans, beasts, and all living things that dwell on it, without dissenting or altering any of the decrees he (God) has set forth” (trans. Ehrman).

90. Thus there is no tension with 1 Clem 20:11 (“The great Creator and Master of all appointed all these things in peace and harmony,” trans. Ehrman), as Le Boulluec proposed (SC 608:74, n.2).

91. I owe this reference to Gaca, Fornication, 281.

92. See further Stephen T. Newmyer, Animals in Greek and Roman Thought: A Sourcebook (London: Taylor & Francis, 2010), esp. 82–6.

93. See further K. Dell, “The Use of Animal Imagery in the Psalms and Wisdom Literature of Ancient Israel,” Scottish Journal of Theology 53, no. 3 (2000): 275–91; T. Forti, Animal Imagery in the Book of Proverbs (Leiden: Brill, 2008).

94. Cf. the conjunction of natural and divine law in Clement, Strom. 3.9.64.2: “by natural necessity of the divine economy, death follows birth” (φυσικῇ δὲ ἀνάγκῃ θείας οίκονoμίας γένεσει θάνατος ἕπεται).

95. Later in Stromata 3, Clement accused Prodican Christians of calling themselves royal children for whom the law is unwritten (νόμος ἄγραφος) (Strom 3.4.30.1; cf. 2.4.18.4).

96. Cf. Ps.-Heraclitus, Ep. 9: “law is not something written, but a god” (νόμος ἐστὶν οὐ γράμμα, ἀλλὰ θεός)” (Attridge 82.22–3). See further J.W. Martens, One God, One Law: Philo of Alexandria on the Mosaic and Greco-Roman Law (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 1–66.

97. David T. Runia, Philo of Alexandria and the Timaeus of Plato (Leiden: Brill, 1986), 108–11.

98. See further A.D. Nock, “The Exegesis of Timaeus 28c,” VC 16, no. 2 (1962): 79–86.

99. Pétrement, Separate God, 347; cf. Jurasz, “Carpocrate et Epiphane,” 167 (Carpocrate et Epiphane partagent une attitude antinomiste).

100. See further Hugh Lloyd-Jones, The Justice of Zeus, 2nd ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), 35–6, 86–7, 99–101.

101. Le Boulluec in SC 608:74, n.3.

102. Dorota M. Dutsch, Pythagorean Women Philosophers: Between Belief and Suspicion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 249–57; Pomeroy, Pythagorean Women, 91–119.

103. I owe this reference to Gaca, Fornication 275, n.3.

104. GCS 15:2.198; SC 608:76; Oulton and Chadwick, Alexandrian Christianity, 43.

105. Gaca, Fornication, 285.

106. Gaca, Fornication, 277. John Chrysostom uses similar language (τὸ σὸν καὶ τὸ ἐμόν) in his Homily 12 on 1 Timothy (PG 62.564). The similarity of Chrysostom and Epiphanes (Erskine, Hellenistic Stoa 110–14) is superficial, however, since Chrysostom’s point was not to advocate a form of common ownership, but to disassociate wealth and (moral) goodness. Chrysostom may have acknowledged that there was no property ownership in Eden, but he did not portray that state as paradigmatic. He lauded Hebrew heroes (for instance Abraham and Job) who were extremely wealthy. In his Homily on Matthew 1.4, moreover, Chrysostom mocked Plato’s and Zeno’s idea that wives ought to be common as devilish. Cf. his Homily 5 on the Epistle to Titus, 4 (PG 62:694).

107. In primeval times, according to Plato, there were no families with children (Rep. 271e). Cf. Lucretius De rerum natura 5.1011–12: “from that time on they prepared houses, garments of skin, and fire; and a woman conceded to be joined in union with a man” (et mulier coniuncta viro concessit in unum).

108. E.g., Gaca, Fornication, 279.

109. Musonius Rufus, Or. 12 (in C.E. Lutz, Rufus “The Roman Socrates” [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1947], 87–9); cf. Seneca, Ep. 94.26. See further Jane F. Gardner, Women in Roman Law and Society (London: Routledge, 1986), 127–31; Susan Treggiari, Roman Marriage: Iusti Coniuges from the Time of Cicero to the Time of Ulpian (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991), 299–309. Clement praised a Laconian maiden who, in response to a stranger who praised the beauty of her legs, replied, “but they belong to my husband alone” (ἀλλὰ μόνου τοῦ ἀνδρὸς τοῦ ἐμοῦ, Paed. 2.10.114.2).

110. It is thus concerning when Nicola Denzey Lewis remarks that the “Carpocratic treatise On Righteousness … consider women property rather than agents” (“Women and Independent Religious Specialists,” in Women and Knowledge in Early Christianity, ed. Ulla Tervahauta [Leiden: Brill, 2017], 22–38 at 35).

111. Gaca, Fornication, 279, n.10.

112. The “forceful” desire of men presumably does not result in force or forced sex (rape), since rape assumes the male’s unequal power over the woman’s body.

113. Petrey, “Gender,” 329.

114. Petrey, “Gender,” 329 (“There is no reason to assume that he [Epiphanes] sees sexual desire as applying to both men and women when he makes the contrary point explicit”).Pace

115. Petrey, “Gender,” 331.Pace

116. Plato also recognized that “erotic necessities” (ἐρωτικαῖς ἀνάγκαις) were in some ways sharper (or more keen, δριμύτεραι) than geometric ones (Resp. 458d). Cf. Laws 782d–83ac; Phaedo 81b.

117. Cf. Philo, Spec. 3.36; QG 3.48; Op. 13–14, 44; Plato, Symp. 207c–d; Aristotle, Gen. an. 2.1 (731b–32a); An. 2.4, 415b; Cicero, Nat. d. 2.128–9; Ascl. 21.

118. Musonius Rufus, Or., 14 in Lutz, 92.8–14.

119. Here I use the text and adopt the translation of Will Deming, Paul on Marriage and Celibacy: The Hellenistic Background of 1 Corinthians 7, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 232–3.

120. Menahem Stern, ed., Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism, 3 vols. (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1980), 2.26.

121. SC 608:81, n.3.

122. L reads λέγων.

123. Vergil, Aen. 7.648; 8.7 (Mezentius); Statius, Thebaid 9.546–50 (Capaneus). See further Pramit Chaudhuri, The War with God: Theomachy in Roman Imperial Poetry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014); M. David Litwa, Desiring Divinity: Self-Deification in Early Jewish and Christian Mythmaking (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 13–66.

124. Kylie Crabbe, “Being Found Fighting against God: Luke’s Gamaliel and Josephus on Human Responses to Divine Providence,” ZNW 106, no. 1 (2015): 21–39, esp. 25–6.

125. See further Le Boulluec, Notion d’hérésie 2.296–7, 301.

126. Jurasz, “Carpocrate et Epiphane,” 163.

127. Grypeou, Vollkommene Pascha 35 (subversive Art der Widerlegung des biblischen Gesetzes), 138 (Diese Einstellung richtet sich zuallererst gegen die biblischen Gebote).

128. Liboron, Karpokratianische Gnosis, 21–2.

129. Eckhard Rau, “Das Geheimnis des Reiches Gottes: Die esoterische Rezeption der Lehre Jesus im geheimen Markusevangelium,” in Jesus in apokryphen Evangelienüberlieferung: Beiträgen zu ausserkanonischen Jesusüberlieferungen aus verschiedenen Sprach- und Kulturtraditionen, ed. Jörg Frey and Jens Schröter (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), 187–221 at 211 (der radikalen Ablehnung des alttestamentlichen Gesetzes).

130. Filastrius, Div. Haer. 57.1–2: Carpocratiani ... omnemque resurrectionem in filiorum procreatione nefandi coitus aestimantes consistere ... legis praeceptum implere putantes: Nascimini et multiplicamini. In this passage, Filastrius wrongly calls Carpocratians “Florians” (Floriani) and “Soldiers” (Milites).

131. That Epiphanes criticized Moses as opposed to God was already pointed out, e.g., by Filoramo, A History, 161; Jurasz, “Carpocrate et Epiphane,” 163.

132. Perhaps most famously Ap. John NHC II,1 22.22–4; 13.13–26; 29.6–7. See further Jared C. Calaway, “From Ignorant to Inspired: Moses in Gnostic Literature,” Gnosis 6 (2021): 1–30.

133. Löhr, “Epiphanes’ Schrift,” 27–8.Pace

134. According to Irenaeus, Carpocrates introduced “plurality of marriages” (multas nuptias, AH 1.28.2)—which apparently refers to sex acts with multiple women.

135. Correction by W. Dindorf. L reads τῇ κυπρίσῃ.

136. Cf. Epiphanius, Pan. 26.4.1–3, which may have been influenced by Clement’s account, for Epiphanius also begins, “They hold their wives in common” (26.4.1). See further Burton L. Visotzsky, “Overturning the Lamp,” Journal of Jewish Studies 38, no. 1 (1987): 72–80; Mark Edwards, “Some Early Christian Immoralities,” Ancient Society 23 (1992): 71–82; Löhr, “Karpokratianisches,” 33–4; Williams, Rethinking, 163–88; Jennifer Knust, Abandoned to Lust: The Politics of Sexual Slander in Early Christian Discourse (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), 143–63; Susanna Drake, Slandering the Jew: Sexuality and Difference in Early Christian Texts (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), esp. 9–10; Bart Wagemakers, “Incest, Infanticide and Cannibalism: Anti-Christian Imputations in the Roman Empire,” Greece & Rome 57, no. 2 (2010): 337–54; S. Benko, “Pagan Criticism of Christianity during the First Two Centuries,” ANRW 2.23.2, ed. Wolfgang Haase (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1980), 1055–118; C. De Vos, “Popular Graeco-Roman Responses to Christianity,” in The Early Christian World, ed. P.F. Esler (London: Routledge, 2000), 869–89.

137. See further Andrew McGowan, “Naming the Feast: The Agape and the Diversity of Early Christian Meals,” Studia Patristica 30 (1997): 314–18.

138. Plato, Republic 423e–4a; 458e–61e.

139. Löhr, “Epiphanes’ Schrift,” 20. See further Suzanne Saïd, “La République de Platon et la communauté des femmes,” L’Antiquité Classique 55 (1986): 142–62.

140. Piotr Ashwin-Siejkowski, “Plato in Bad Company? Plato’s Pace Republic (588b–9b) in the Nag Hammadi Collection: A Re-examination of its Background,” Gnosis 5 (2020): 172–87.

141. Le Boulluec, Notion d’hérésie 2.300.

142. DL, Vita Phil. 6.72 (Diogenes of Sinope); 7.33 (Zeno), 131 (Chrysippus). See further Anton-Hermann Chroust, “The Ideal Polity of the Early Stoics: Zeno’s Republic,” Review of Politics 27, no. 2 (1965): 173–83; Erskine, Hellenistic Stoa, 112–16, George Boys-Stones, “Eros in Government: Zeno and the Virtuous City,” Classical Quarterly 48 (1998): 168–74; Gaca, Fornication, 59–93.

143. Donald R. Dudley, A History of Cynicism: From Diogenes to the Sixth Century AD (London: Methuen, 1937), 186–201; J.M. Rist, Stoic Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 54–80. For the hypothesis of Cynic influence on Epiphanes, see M.-O. Goulet-Cazé, Cynisme et christianisme dans l’Antiquité (Paris: Vrin, 2015), 31–6, 179–80; Jurasz, “Carpocrate et Epiphane,” 165–6.

144. H.C. Baldry, “Zeno’s Ideal State,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 79 (1959): 3–15 at 6. See further Erskine, Hellenistic Stoa, 23; Donald R. Morrison, “The Utopian Character of Plato’s Ideal City,” in Cambridge Companion to Plato’s Republic, ed. G.R.F. Ferrari (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 232–55.

145. Philodemus, On the Stoics 9.1–6; 11.10–11; 12.16–18; 14.23–4 in W. Crönert, Kolotes und Menedemos [Leipzig: E. Avenarius, 1906], 53–67. The relevant passages can be found in Bees, Zenons Politeia. See his discussion 27–41. Cf. H.C. Baldry, “Zeno’s Ideal State,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 79 (1959): 3–15 at 3–4; Malcolm Schofield, The Stoic Idea of the City (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 3–21.

146. The tradition that Zeno in his Republic said that the sage will marry and have children (DL, Vita Phil. 7.121) does not contradict the community of wives ideal. As in Plato’s system, men married the wives with whom they had children (Resp. 459d); but they were not limited to these wives. See further Baldry, “Zeno’s Ideal State,” 9–10; Schofield, Stoic Idea, 119–27; Bees, Zenons Politeia, 142–3. Later Stoics thought that marriage to one wife was in accord with nature (Cicero, Fin. 3.68).

147. Clement appealed to Zeno for advice on modest and manly behavior (Paed. 3.11.74). He also promoted Zeno’s equally radical idea (also in his Republic) that temples and cult statues should be done away with (Strom. 5.12.76.1).

148. See further Bees, Zenons Politeia, 120–43.

149. Possible dependence on Epictetus is suggested by the fact that Clement’s analogy about the theater was mentioned by Epictetus; yet this was a common example (e.g., Chrysippus in Cicero, Fin. 3.67).

150. See further Ashwin-Siejkowski, Clement, 90–1.

151. Annalisa Paradiso, “Xanthos (765),” in Brill’s New Jacoby, ed. Ian Worthington, consulted online on June 1, 2021.

152. See further Le Boulluec, Notion d’hérésie 2.316–17; Mary Boyce, Frantz Grenet with Roger Beck, A History of Zoroastrianism, Vol. 3, Zoroastrianism under Macedonian and Roman Rule (Leiden: Brill, 1991), 8, 256; R.N. Fray, “Zoroastrian incest,” in Studi Tucci 1 (1985): 445–55; Albert de Jong, Traditions of the Magi. Zoroastrianism in Greek and Latin Literature (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 424–34; Bees, Zenons Politeia 154–74; P.O. Skjærvø, ‘Marriage ii. Next-of-Kin Marriage in Zoroastrianism’, in Encyclopaedia Iranica, Online Edition, accessed January 30, 2013; Paul John Frandsen, Incestuous and Close-kin Marriage in Ancient Egypt and Persia: An Examiantion of the Evidence (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum, 2009), 60-124.

153. See further P. Kingsley, “Meetings with Magi: Iranian Themes among the Greeks from Xanthus of Lydia to Plato’s Academy,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 5 (1995): 173–209 at 179–81.

154. See further Jörg Frey, The Letter of Jude and the Second Letter of Peter: A Theological Commentary, trans. Kathleen Ess (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2018), 345.

155. Cf. Clement’s appeal to Jude 5–7, 11 in his Paed. 3.8.44–5. See further Frederick Wisse, “The Epistle of Jude in the History of Heresiology,” in Essays on the Nag Hammadi Texts in Honor of Alexander Böhlig, ed. M. Krause (Leiden: Brill, 1972), 133–43.

156. Otto Stählin, ed., Clemens Alexandrinus. Excerpta ex Theodoto, Eclogae Propheticae, Quis Dives Salvetur, Fragmente, GCS 17 (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1909), 208 (significant eos comedere ac bibere et rebus veneriacis indulgere … quae sunt communia cum animalibus ratione carentibus). Hereafter this work will be cited as GCS 17.

157. See further Le Boulluec, Notion d’hérésie 2.317–19.

158. Dreaming as an image of vain imagination was common. Cf. Philo, Somn. 2.105: “Whenever one changes to the better life and no longer dreams or is distressed by wallowing in the mud of vain opinions” (ἐπειδᾶν δὲ πρὸς ἀμείνων βίον μεταβάλῃ καὶ μηκέτ’ ἐνυπνιάζηται μηδὲ ταὶς κεναὶς τῶν κενοδόξων φαντασίαις ἰλυσπώμενος κακοπαθῇ).

159. Stählin, GCS 17.207 (hoc est: qui somniant imaginatione sua libidines et reprobas cupiditates bonum esse putantes, non illud quod vere bonum est et omni bono superius).

160. 155John J. Gunther, “The Alexandrian Epistle of Jude,” NTS 30 (1984): 549-62.

161. 156Smith, CA 268.

References

Primary

1. Athenaeus. The Learned Banqueters Books VI–VII. Translated by S. Douglas Olson. LCL. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008.

2. Attridge, Harold. First Century Cynicism in the Epistles of Heraclitus. Missoula: Scholars Press, 1976.

3. Augustine. Contra adversarium Legis et Prophetarum. Edited by K. Daur. CCSL 49. Turnhout: Brepols, 1985.

4. Barigazzi, A. Favorino di Arelate. Opere. Florence: Monnier, 1966.

5. Cicero. De Finibus bonorum et malorum. Edited by H. Rackham. LCL. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univeristy Press, 1971.

6. Cicero. De officiis. Edited by Walter Miller. LCL. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univeristy Press, 1975.

7. Cicero. De re publica, De legibus. Edited by Clinton Walker Keyes. LCL. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1948.

8. [Cicero]. Ad C. Herennium de Ratione Dicendi (Rhetorica ad Herennium). Edited by Harry Caplan. LCL. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968.

9. Clement of Alexandria. Les Stromates. Stromate III. Edited by Patrick Descourtieux and Alain Le Boulluec. SC 608. Paris: Cerf, 2020.

10. Clement of Alexandria. Protrepticus und Paedagogus. Edited by Otto Stählin and Ursula Treu, 3rd ed. GCS 12. Berlin: Akademie, 1972.

11. Clement of Alexandria, Otto Stählin, Ludwig Früchtel and Ursula Treu, eds. Clemens Alexandrinus Stromata I-VI. 4th ed. GCS 15. Berlin: Akademie, 1985.

12. Clement of Alexandria. Stromata Buch VII und VIII, Excerpta ex Theodoto, Eclogae Propheticae, Quis Dives Salvetur, Fragmente. Edited by Otto Stählin. GCS 17. Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1909.

13. Copenhaver, Brian P., trans. Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius in a New English Translation with Notes and Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

14. Dio Cassius. Roman History. Translated by Earnest Cary and Herbert B. Foster. 9 vols. LCL. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1914–1927.

15. Dittenberger, Wilhelm, ed. Orientis Graeci Inscriptiones Selectae. Leipzig: Herzel, 1903.

16. Ehrman, Bart, ed. Apostolic Fathers. LCL 25. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003.

17. Historia Augusta Volume 1: Hadrian. Translated by David Magie. LCL 139. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1921.

18. Inscriptiones Graecae Volumen XII. Edited by Dimitris Bosnakis and Klaus Hallof. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2012.

19. Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae. Edited by Hermann Dessau. 3 vols. Berlin: Weidmann, 1974.

20. Litwa, M. David. Hermetica II: The Excerpts of Stobaeus, Papyrus Fragments, and Ancient Testimonies in a English Translation with Notes and Introductions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.

21. Lucretius. De rerum natura libri sex. Edited by William Ellery Leonard and Stanley Barney Smith. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1942.

22. Lutz, C.E., ed. Musonius Rufus “The Roman Socrates .” New Haven: Yale University Press, 1947.

23. Oehler, Franz, ed. Corporis Haeresiologici tomus primus continens scriptores haereseologicos minores Latinos. Berlin: Asher, 1856.

24. Pausanias. Description de la Grèce. Edited by Michel Casevitz, Jean Pouilloux and François Chamoux. 4 vols. Budé. Paris: Belles Lettres, 1992–2005.

25. Philo. Opera. Edited by Leopold Cohn and Paul Wendland. 7 vols. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1962–1963.

26. Plato. Opera. Edited by E.A. Duke, W.F. Hicken, W.S.M. Nicoll, D.B. Robinson, J.C.G. Strachan. 5 vols. OCT. Oxford: Clarendon, 1995.

27. Seneca. Epistles. Translated by Richard M. Gummere. 3 vols. LCL. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1917.

28. Simplicius. In Aristotelis physicorum libros commentaria. Edited by Hermann Diels. Berlin: Reimer, 1892.

29. Statius. Thebaid. Translated by D.R. Shackleton Bailey. 2 vols. LCL. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004.

30. Stobaeus. Anthologium. Edited by Curt Wachsmuth and Otto Hense. 2nd ed. 5 vols. Berlin: Weidmann, 1958.

31. Vergil. Aeneid VII-XII. Translated by H. Rushton Fairclough. Revised by G.P. Goold. LCL 64. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1918.

Secondary

1. Afonasin, Eugene. “The Pythagorean Way of Life in Clement of Alexandria and Iamblichus.” Pages 13–26 in Iamblichus and the Foundations of Late Platonism. Edited by Eugene Afonasin, John Dillon, and John F. Finamore. Leiden: Brill, 2012.

2. Annas, Julia. The Morality of Happiness. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.

3. Ascough, Richard A., Philip A. Harland and John S. Kloppenborg, ed. Associations in the Greco-Roman World. Waco: Baylor University Press, 2012.

4. Ashwin-Siejkowski, Piotr. Clement of Alexandria: A Project of Christian Perfection. London: T&T Clark, 2008.

5. Ashwin-Siejkowski, Piotr. “Plato in Bad Company? Plato’s Republic (588b–589b) in the Nag Hammadi Collection: A Re-examination of Its Background.” Gnosis 5 (2020): 172–187.

6. Aune, D.E. “Galatians 3:28 and the Problem of Equality in the Church and Society.” Pages 153–184 in From Judaism to Christianity: Tradition and Transition. A Festschrift for Thomas H. Tobin, S.J., on the Occasion of His Sixty-Fifth Birthday. Edited by Patricia Walters. Leiden: Brill, 2010.

7. Baldry, H.C. “Zeno’s Ideal State.” Journal of Hellenic Studies 79 (1959): 3–15.

8. Baltussen, H. “Cicero’s Consolatio ad se: Character, Purpose and Impact of a Curious Treatise” Pages 67–91 in Greek and Roman Consolations: Eight Studies of a Tradition and Its Afterlife. Edited by Han Baltussen. Swansea: Classical Press of Wales, 2013.

9. Bees, R. Zenons Politeia. Leiden: Brill, 2011.

10. Benko, S. “Pagan Criticism of Christianity during the First Two Centuries.” Pages 1055–1018 in ANRW 2.23.2. Edited by Wolfgang Haase. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1980.

11. Berchman, Robert M. “The Categories of Being in Middle Platonism: Philo, Clement, and Origen of Alexandria.” Pages 98–140 in The School of Moses: Studies in Philo and Hellenistic Religion. Edited by John Peter Kenney. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995.

12. Betz, Hans Dieter. 2 Corinthians 8 and 9: A Commentary on Two Administrative Letters of the Apostle Paul. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985.

13. Bidez, J. La cité du monde et la cité du soleil chez les Stoïciens. Paris: Belles Lettres, 1932.

14. Biedermann, Georg. Die Insel Kephallenia im Altertum. Munich: F. Straub, 1887.

15. Blumell, Lincoln H. and Thomas A. Wayment, ed. Christian Oxyrhynchus: Texts, Documents, and Sources. Waco: Baylor University Press, 2015.

16. Blumenfeld, Bruno. The Political Paul: Democracy and Kingship in Paul’s Thought. London: Bloomsbury, 2004.

17. Bodel, John. “Monumental Villas and Villa Monuments.” Journal of Roman Archaeology 10 (1997): 5–35.

18. Bolgiani, Franco. “La polemica di Clemente Alessandrino contro gli Gnostici libertini nel III libro degli ‘Stromati’”. Studi e Materiali di Storia delle Religioni 38 (1967): 86–136.

19. Boyancé, Pierre. “L’apothéose de Tullia.” Revue de Études Ancienne 46 (1944): 179–184.

20. Boyancé, Pierre. Le Culte des Muses chez les philosophes grecs: Études d’histoire et de psychologie religieuses. Paris: Boccard, 1936.

21. Boyce, Mary, Frantz Grenet with Roger Beck. A History of Zoroastrianism, Vol. 3, Zoroastrianism under Macedonian and Roman Rule. Leiden: Brill, 1991.

22. Boys-Stones, George. “Eros in Government: Zeno and the Virtuous City.” Classical Quarterly 48 (1998): 168–174.

23. Boys-Stones, George, ed., Platonist Philosophy 80 BC to AD 250: An Introduction and Collection of Sources in Translation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.

24. Burkert, Walter. Griechische religion der archaischen und klassischen Epoche. 2nd ed. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2011.

25. Calaway, Jared C. “From Ignorant to Inspired: Moses in Gnostic Literature.” Gnosis 6 (2021): 1–30.

26. Chadwick, Henry and John Ernest Leonard Oulton. Alexandrian Christianity. London: SCM Press, 1954.

27. Chantraine, Pierre. Dictionnaire Étymologique de la Langue Grecque: Histoire des Mots, 5 vols. Paris: Klincksieck, 1968.

28. Chaudhuri, Pramit. The War with God: Theomachy in Roman Imperial Poetry. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.

29. Chroust, Anton-Hermann. “The Ideal Polity of the Early Stoics: Zeno’s Republic.” Review of Politics 27:2 (1965): 173–183.

30. Clark, G. Christianity and Roman Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

31. Cole, Spencer. Cicero and the Rise of Deification at Rome. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.

32. Crabbe, Kylie. “Being Found Fighting against God: Luke’s Gamaliel and Josephus on Human Responses to Divine Providence.” ZNW 106:1 (2015): 21–39.

33. Currie, Bruno. Pindar and the Cult of Heroes. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.

34. De Faye, Eugène. Gnostiques et Gnosticisme: Études critique des documents du gnosticisme chrétien aux IIe et IIIe siècles. Paris: Leroux, 1913.

35. De Jong, Albert. Traditions of the Magi. Zoroastrianism in Greek and Latin Literature. Leiden: Brill, 1997.

36. De Vos, C. “Popular Graeco-Roman Responses to Christianity.” Pages 869–889 in The Early Christian World. Edited by P.F. Esler. London: Routledge, 2000.

37. Deming, Will. Paul on Marriage and Celibacy: The Hellenistic Background of 1 Corinthians 7. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004.

38. Denzey Lewis, Nicola. “Women and Independent Religious Specialists.” Pages 22–38 in Women and Knowledge in Early Christianity. Edited by Ulla Tervahauta. Leiden: Brill, 2017.

39. Desmond, William. The Cynics. Hoboken: Taylor and Francis, 2014.

40. Dillon, John M. and Wolfgang Polleichtner, ed. Iamblichus of Chalcis: The Letters, Edited with a Translation and Commentary. Atlanta: SBL Press, 2009.

41. Donahue, John R. “Stoic Indifferents and Christian Indifference in Clement of Alexandria.” Traditio 19 (1963): 438–446.

42. Drake, Susanna. Slandering the Jew: Sexuality and Difference in Early Christian Texts. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013.

43. Dudley, Donald R. A History of Cynicism: From Diogenes to the Sixth Century AD. London: Methuen, 1937.

44. Dutsch, Dorota M. Pythagorean Women Philosophers: Between Belief and Suspicion. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020.

45. Edwards, Mark. “Some Early Christian Immoralities.” Ancient Society 23 (1992): 71–82.

46. Edwards, Robert G.T. “Clement of Alexandria’s Gnostic Exposition of the Decalogue.” JECS 23, no. 4 (2015): 501–528.

47. Englert, Walter. “Fanum and Philosophy: Cicero and the Death of Tullia.” Ciceroniana Online I, no. 1 (2017): 41–66.

48. Erskine, Andrew. Hellenistic Stoa: Political Thought and Action. London: Bristol Classical Press, 2011.

49. Everitt, Anthony. Hadrian and the Triumph of Rome. London: Head of Zeus, 2013.

50. Ferguson, John, translator. Clement of Alexandria Stromateis Books One to Three. FC 85. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1991.

51. Filoramo, Giovanni. A History of Gnosticism. Translated by Anthony Alcock. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990.

52. Fray, R.N. “Zoroastrian Incest.” Studi Tucci 1 (1985): 445–455.

53. Frazier, Françoise. “Le principe d’égalité chez Philon d’Alexandrie.” Ktèma 31 (2006): 291–308.

54. Frey, Jörg. The Letter of Jude and the Second Letter of Peter: A Theological Commentary. Translated by Kathleen Ess. Waco: Baylor University Press, 2018.

55. Fridh, Åke. “Sacellum, Sacrarium, Fanum, and Related Terms.” Pages 173–187 in Greek and Latin Studies in Memory of Cajus Fabricius. Edited by Sven-Tage Teodorssen. Göteborg: University of Göteborg, 1990.

56. Fürst, Alfons. Christentum als Intellektuellen-religion: Die Anfänge des Christentums in Alexandria. Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 2007.

57. Gantz, Timothy. Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources, 2 vols. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993.

58. Gardner, Jane F. Women in Roman Law and Society. London: Routledge, 1986.

59. Georgi, Dieter. Remembering the Poor: The History of Paul’s Collection for Jerusalem. Nashville: Abingdon, 1992.

60. Goodenough, E.R. By Light, Light: The Mystic Gospel of Hellenistic Judaism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1935.

61. Goodenough, E.R. “The Political Philosophy of Hellenistic Kingship.” Yale Classical Studies 1 (1928): 55–102.

62. Goulet-Cazé, M.-O. Cynisme et christianisme dans l’Antiquité. Paris: Vrin, 2015.

63. Grant, Robert M. “Carpocratians and the Curriculum: Irenaeus’s Reply.” HTR 79 (1986): 127–136.

64. Grant, Robert M. Early Christianity and Society: Seven Studies. London: Collins, 1978.

65. Grypeou, Emmanouela. “ Das vollkommene Pascha ”: Gnostische Bibelexegese und Ethik. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2005.

66. Hadot, Ilsetraut. Arts libéraux et philosophie dans la pensée antique. Paris: Etudes Augustiniennes, 1984.

67. Heath, J.M.F. Clement of Alexandria and the Shape of Christian Literary Practice: Miscellany and the Transformation of Greco-Roman Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020.

68. Heintz, Florent. Simon “Le magician”: Actes 8, 5–25 et l’accusation de magie contre les prophètes thaumaturges dans l’antiquité. Paris: Gabalda, 1997.

69. Horsley, Richard A. “The Law of Nature in Philo and Cicero.” HTR 71 (1978): 35–59.

70. Jonas, Hans. The Gnostic Religion: The Message of the Alien God and the Beginnings of Christianity, 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 1963.

71. Jones, Christopher P. Between Pagan and Christian. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014.

72. Jones, Christopher P. New Heroes in Antiquity: From Achilles to Antinoos. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010.

73. Kalvesmaki, Joel. Theology of Arithmetic: Number Symbolism in Platonism and Early Christianity. Washington, DC: Center for Hellenic Studies, 2013.

74. Karavites, Peter (Panayiotis). Evil, Freedom, and the Road to Perfection in Clement of Alexandria. VCSup 43.Leiden: Brill, 1999.

75. Kingsley, P. “Meetings with Magi: Iranian Themes among the Greeks from Xanthus of Lydia to Plato’s Academy.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 5 (1995): 173–209.

76. Klauck, Hans-Josef. Religious Context of Early Christianity: A Guide to Graeco-Roman Religions. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000.

77. Knust, Jennifer. Abandoned to Lust: The Politics of Sexual Slander in Early Christian Discourse. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006.

78. Kok, Michael. “Morton Smith and the Carpocratians.” Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses 97/4 (2021): 591–607.

79. Kovacs, Judith L. “Was Paul an Antinomian, a Radical Ascetic, or a Sober Married Man? Exegetical Debates in Clement of Alexandria’s Stromateis 3.” Pages 186–202 in Asceticism and Exegesis in Early Christianity: The Reception of New Testament Texts in Ancient Ascetic Discourses. Edited by H.-U. Weidemann. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013.

80. Kuhlmann, Peter. Religion und Erinnerung: Die Religionspolitik Kaiser Hadrians und ihre Rezeption in der antiken Literatur. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2002.

81. Lambert, Royston. Beloved and God: The Story of Hadrian and Antinous. Secaucus: Meadowland, 1984.

82. Lampe, Peter. From Paul to Valentinus: Christians at Rome in the First Two Centuries. Edited by Marshall Johnson. Translated by Michael Steinhauser. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003.

83. Laurand, Valéry. “La justice chez Philon d’Alexandrie.” Pages 37–47 in L’amour de la justice, de la Septante à Thomas d’Aquin. Edited by Anne-Isabelle Bouton-Touboulic. Pessac: Ausonius, 2017.

84. Le Boulluec, Alain. La notion d’hérésie dans la literature grecque, IIe-IIIe siècles, 2 vols. Paris: Études augustiniennes, 1985.

85. Lilla, Salvatore R.C. Clement of Alexandria: A Study in Christian Platonism and Gnosticism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971.

86. Litwa, M. David. Desiring Divinity: Self-Deification in Early Jewish and Christian Mythmaking. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.

87. Litwa, M. David. Found Christianities: Remaking the World of the Second Century. London: T&T Clark, 2022.

88. Litwa, M. David. Iesus Deus: The Early Christian Depiction of Jesus as a Mediterranean God. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2014.

89. Lloyd-Jones, Hugh. The Justice of Zeus, 2nd ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983.

90. Löhr, Winrich A. “Epiphanes’ Schrift Περὶ διακαιοσύνης.” Pages 12–29 in Logos. Festschrift für Luise Abramowski zum 8. Juli 1993. Edited by Hanns Christof Brennecke, Ernst Ludwig Grasmück, and Christoph Markschies. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1993.

91. Löhr, Winrich A. “Karpokratianisches.” VC 49, no. 1 (1995): 23–48.

92. Marrou, Henri-Irénée. A History of Education in Antiquity. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1982.

93. Marrou, Henry-Irénée. MOUSIKOS ANÊR: Étude sur les scènes de la vie intellectuelle figurant sur les monuments funéraires romains. Rome: L’erma, 1964.

94. Martens, J.W. One God, One Law: Philo of Alexandria on the Mosaic and Greco-Roman Law. Leiden: Brill, 2003.

95. McGowan, Andrew. “Naming the Feast: The Agape and the Diversity of Early Christian Meals.” Studia Patristica 30 (1997): 314–318.

96. McIntyre, Gwynaeth “Deification as Consolation: The Divine Children of the Roman Imperial Family.” Historia 62, no. 2 (2013): 224–240.

97. Mealand, David L. “Community of Goods and Utopian Allusions in Acts II-IV.” JTS 28, no. 1 (1977): 96–99.

98. Méhat, André. Étude sur les ‘Stromates’ de Clément d’Alexandrie. Paris: de Seuil, 1966.

99. Mendelson, Alan. Secular Education in Philo of Alexandria. Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1982.

100. Mitsis, Phillip. “Natural Law and Natural Right in Post-Aristotelian Philosophy: The Stoics and Their Critics.” Pages 4812–4850 in ANRW II.36.7. Edited by Wolfgang Haase. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1994.

101. Morgan, Teresa. Literate Education in the Hellenistic and Roman World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

102. Morrison, Donald R. “The Utopian Character of Plato’s Ideal City.” Pages 232–255 in Cambridge Companion to Plato’s Republic. Edited by G.R.F. Ferrari. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

103. Najman, Hindy. “The Law of Nature and the Authority of Mosaic Law.” SPhA 11 (1999): 55–73.

104. Newmyer, Stephen T. Animals in Greek and Roman Thought: A Sourcebook. London: Taylor & Francis, 2010.

105. Nock, A.D. “The Exegesis of Timaeus 28c.”VC 16, no. 2 (1962): 79–86.

106. Ogereau, Julien M. “The Jerusalem Collection as Κοινωνία: Paul’s Global Politics of Socio-Economic Equality and Solidarity.” NTS 58 (2012): 360–378.

107. Otto, Jennifer. “Philo Judaeus? A Re-evaluation of Why Clement Calls Philo ‘The Pythagorean’.” SPhA 25 (2013): 115–138.

108. Petrey, Taylor G. “Gender and the History of Sexuality in Clement of Alexandria and Epiphanes.” Early Christianity 9 (2018): 319–348.

109. Pomeroy, Arthur J. Arius Didymus: Epitome of Stoic Ethics. Atlanta: SBL Press, 1999.

110. Pomeroy, Sarah B. Pythagorean Women: Their History and Writings. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013.

111. Price, S.R.F. “Gods and Emperors: The Greek Language of the Roman Imperial Cult.” Journal of Hellenic Studies 104 (1984): 79–95.

112. Price, S.R.F. Rituals and Power: The Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984.

113. Rau, Eckhard. “Das Geheimnis des Reiches Gottes: Die esoterische Rezeption der Lehre Jesus im geheimen Markusevangelium.” Pages 187–221 in Jesus in apokryphen Evangelienüberlieferung: Beiträgen zu ausserkanonischen Jesusüberlieferungen aus verschiedenen Sprach- und Kulturtraditionen. Edited by Jörg Frey and Jens Schröter. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010.

114. Rist, J.M. Stoic Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969.

115. Rosenberger, Veit. “Coping with Death: Private Deification in the Roman Empire.” Pages 109–124 in Burial Rituals, Ideas of Afterlife, and the Individual in the Hellenistic World and the Roman Empire. Edited by Katharina Waldner, Richard Gordon, and Wolfgang Spickermann. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2016.

116. Runia, David T. Philo of Alexandria and the Timaeus of Plato. Leiden: Brill, 1986.

117. Runia, David T., Gregory E. Sterling, and Hindy Najman. Laws Stamped with the Seals of Nature: Law and Nature in Hellenistic Philosophy and Philo of Alexandria. Providence: Brown University Press, 2003.

118. Russell, D.A. “Arts and Sciences in Ancient Education.” Greece and Rome 36 (2010): 210–225.

119. Russell, Norman. The Doctrine of Deification in the Greek Patristic Tradition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.

120. Saïd, Suzanne. “La République de Platon et la communauté des femmes.” L’Antiquité Classique 55 (1986): 142–162.

121. Schofield, Malcolm. “Two Stoic Approaches to Justice.” Pages 191–212 in Justice and Generosity: Studies in Hellenistic Social and Political Philosophy: Proceedings of the Sixth Symposium Hellenisticum. Edited by Malcolm Schofield and André Laks. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

122. Schofield, Malcolm. The Stoic Idea of the City. Cambridge: Cambridge Univeristy Press, 1991.

123. Schürer, Emil. “Zu 2 Mcc 6,7 (monatliche Geburtstagsfeier).” ZNW 2 (1901): 48–52.

124. Smith, R.R.R. Antinous: Boy Made God. Oxford: Ashmolean, 2018.

125. Snyder, Walter F. “Hemerai Sebastai.” Aegyptus 16 (1938): 197–233.

126. Stern, Menahem, ed. Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism, 3 vols. Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1980.

127. Stowers, Stanley K. “Locating the Religion of Associations.” Pages 301–324 in Re-Making the World: Essays in Honor of Karen L. King. Edited by Taylor G. Petrey. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2019.

128. Striker, Gisela, ed. Essays on Hellenistic Epistemology and Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge Univeristy Press, 1996.

129. Sullivan, John J. “Consecratio in Cicero.” Classical Weekly 37, no. 14 (1944): 157–159.

130. Taylor, Justin. “The Community of Goods among the First Christians and Among the Essenes.” Pages 147–161 in Historical Perspectives: From the Hasmoneans to Bar Kokhba in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Proceedings of the Fourth International Symposium of the Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Related Literature. Edited by David Goodblatt. Leiden: Brill, 1999.

131. Theissen, Gerd. “Urchristlicher Liebeskommunismus: Zum ‘Sitz im Leben’ des Topos ἅπαντα κοινά in Apg 2,44 und 4,32.” Pages 689–712 in Texts and Contexts: Biblical Texts in Their Textual and Situational Contexts. Essays in Honor of Lars Hartman. Edited by Tord Fornberg and David Hellholm. Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, 1995.

132. Treggiari, Susan. Roman Marriage: Iusti Coniuges from the Time of Cicero to the Time of Ulpian. Oxford: Clarendon, 1991.

133. Van den Hoek, Annewies. “Techniques of Quotation in Clement of Alexandria. A View of Ancient Literary Working Methods.” VC 50:3 (1996): 223–243.

134. Vander Waerdt, Paul A. “Zeno’s Republic and the Origins of Natural Law.” Pages 272–308 in The Socratic Movement. Edited by Paul A. Vander Waerdt. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994.

135. Vassiliadis, Petros. “Equality and Justice in Classical Antiquity and in Paul: The Social Implications of the Pauline Collection.” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 36 (1992): 51–59.

136. Visotzsky, Burton L. “Overturning the Lamp.” Journal of Jewish Studies 38, no. 1 (1987): 72–80.

137. Wagemakers, Bart. “Incest, Infanticide and Cannibalism: Anti-Christian Imputations in the Roman Empire.” Greece & Rome 57, no. 2 (2010): 337–354.

138. Watson, Gerard. “The Natural Law and Stoicism.” Pages 216–238 in Problems in Stoicism. Edited by A.A. Long. London: Athlone Press, 1971.

139. Welborn, L.L. “Paul’s Place in a First-Century Revival of the Discourse of ‘Equality.’” HTR 110, no. 4 (2017): 541–562.

140. Westerink, Leendert G., ed., Anonymous Prolegomena to Platonic Philosophy. Dilton Marsh: Prometheus, 2011.

141. Whittaker, John. “Self-Generating Principles in Second-Century Gnostic Systems.” Volume 1 Pages 176–189 in The Rediscovery of Gnosticism: Proceedings of the International Conference on Gnosticism at Yale, New Haven, Connecticut, March 28–31, 1978. Edited by Bentley Layton, 2 vols. Leiden: Brill, 1981.

142. Wisse, Frederick. “The Epistle of Jude in the History of Heresiology.” Pages 133–143 in Essays on the Nag Hammadi Texts in Honor of Alexander Böhlig. Edited by M. Krause. Leiden: Brill, 1972.

143. Wissowa, Georg. “Monatliche Geburtstagsfeier.” Hermes 37 (1902): 157–159.

144. Wittenburg, Andreas. Il testamento di Epikteta. Trieste: Bernardi, 1990.

145. Woodard, Roger D. Indo-European Sacred Space: Vedic and Roman Cult. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006.

146. Wrede, Henning. Consecratio in formam deorum: Vergöttlichte Privatpersonen in der römischen Kaiserzeit. Mainz am Rhein: Philipp von Zabern, 1981.

147. Zanker, Paul. The Mask of Socrates: The Image of the Intellectual in Antiquity. Translated by Alan Shapiro. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.