2

Commentary on the earliest Carpocrates reports

Introduction

In this chapter, I turn to the heresiological tradition regarding Carpocrates and Marcellina. There are over two dozen surviving heresiological reports regarding Carpocrates and Marcellina from the second to the twelfth centuries CE, but all of them go back in some way to Irenaeus.¹ Understanding Irenaeus, then, is the only secure means of understanding the heresiological tradition regarding Carpocrates and Marcellina.

Irenaeus

Irenaeus was born somewhere in western Asia Minor, likely the city of Smyrna (modern Izmir). As a young man, he encountered Polycarp, an aged Christian leader—later martyred—who impressed upon him a particular stream of early Christian tradition.² After a sojourn in Rome in the late 150s or early 160s, Irenaeus ended up working as a presbyter in the city of Lugdunum (modern Lyon). In response to persecution there, he brought letters of imprisoned martyrs to Rome in 177 CE.³ When he returned to Lyon, he was apparently chosen to replace the leader of his Christian network.

As Irenaeus tried to rebuild his beleaguered Christian conventicle, he also began writing against a certain other Christian assembly. This other assembly was integrated into Roman, Asian, and Gallic ecclesial networks. They were the Christian followers of Valentinus, a theologian who spent his mature years in Rome and perished, it seems, about the year 160 CE. In an attempt to blacklist and exclude Valentinus’s followers from his own Christian communion, Irenaeus wrote his five-volume work Refutation and Overthrow of Knowledge Falsely So-Called—better known as Against Heresies (AH). In this work, he included a relatively detailed report on Carpocrates and Marcellina who were in some sense presented as forerunners of Valentinus. They were two early Christian theologians from Alexandria, although Marcellina had migrated to Rome, possibly when Valentinus was still alive.⁴

A history of the Carpocrates report

Irenaeus’s main source for his report on Carpocrates and Marcellina was an updated version of Justin Martyr’s Syntagma Against All Heresies. Although Geoffrey S. Smith has argued that Justin himself did not write the initial version of the Syntagma, virtually all ancient writers believed that he did. The writer’s knowledge of Simon of Samaria’s obscure hometown (“Gitta”), and his focus on Palestinian and Syrian figures (namely, Simon, Helen, Menander, and Saturninus) all point to Justin as the author (Justin was Palestinian—specifically a Samarian—by birth).⁵ The Syntagma had to have been written before Justin’s First Apology, which mentions it, hence before 154 CE. After Justin’s death about 165 CE, Justin’s Syntagma was updated by an anonymous editor (or editors), who, as Smith argues, added the entries on the Ebionites, Nicolaitans, Encratites, and Tatian (AH 1.26.2–3; 1.28.1–2).⁶ The hypothetical content of the Syntagma’s updates can be charted in simplified form as follows:

Justin’s Syntagma	Additions of an unknown editor	Additions of Irenaeus, AH
		•Valentinians (AH 1.1–8, 11–21)
• Simon and Helen (AH 1.23)
• Menander (1.23.5)
• Saturninus (1.24.1–2)
• Basilides (1.24.3–7)
	• Carpocrates and Marcellina (AH 1.25.1–6)	• Material added to Carpocrates (AH 1.25.4–5)
	• Cerinthus (1.26.1) • Ebionites (1.26.2)
• Cerdo and Marcion (1.27)	• Nicolaitans (1.26.3)
	• Encratites (1.28.1)
		• Tatian (1.28.1) • Followers of Basilides and Carpocrates (1.28.2)
		• “A crowd of gnostics” (AH 1.29)
		• “Others” (later called “Ophites”) (1.30)
		• “Others” (later called “Cainites”) (1.31.1–2)

Richard Adelbert Lipsius (1830–1892) believed that the first half of the Carpocrates report (AH 1.25.1–3) came from Justin’s Syntagma and that the latter half (1.25.4–6) came from Irenaeus.⁷ Adolf von Harnack (1851–1930) believed that only Irenaeus’s comments on Marcellina (AH 1.25.6) were not from Justin’s Syntagma.⁸ More recently Geoffrey Smith proposes that AH 1.25.1–4, 6 came from the Syntagma, while Irenaeus was responsible for AH 1.25.5.⁹ My own view, as can be seen from the chart, is that Irenaeus inherited the material in 1.25 from an updated version of Justin’s Syntagma, and added comments to it along with a long quote in 1.25.4–5.

My reasoning is as follows. Justin never mentioned the Carpocratians or Marcellina specifically.¹⁰ Most likely, Justin did not know Marcellina because she only arrived at Rome shortly before his death (about 165 CE). Marcellina was probably the main source in Rome for Carpocratian thought. Thus without knowledge of Marcellina, Justin probably did not have adequate material to report on Carpocrates at all. This means that the author of the Carpocrates report was either Irenaeus alone or Irenaeus plus the unknown editor of the Syntagma. If Irenaeus encountered Marcellina in Rome in the late 150s or early 160s, he could have conceivably written the Carpocratian report himself.¹¹ Nevertheless, Irenaeus’s two expressions of disbelief (AH 1.25.4, 5) seem to serve as his own commentary on a received text.

Irenaeus himself might have obtained Carpocratian writings which allowed him to modify and add some elements of the received report. Specifically, I think it likely that Irenaeus added the Carpocratian interpretation of the “parable” of Jesus in Against Heresies 1.25.4 along with the expression of disbelief in 1.25.5. At the same time, I do not think Irenaeus added all the material in Against Heresies 1.25.5. The putatively Carpocratian view that things are good and bad only by human opinion (1.25.5), for instance, seems to restate material found toward the beginning of 1.25.4, before Irenaeus’s citation and reported interpretation of the “parable.”

Who then wrote the initial version of the Carpocrates report? It is probably the work of an anonymous updater of Justin’s Syntagma. This updater lived in Rome and wrote after Justin’s death (about 165 CE). He was interested in Christian theologians and groups (e.g., Carpocrates, Cerinthus, Ebionites) who proposed what might be called a “human” christology—an understanding of Jesus, that is, in which he was born as a normal human being. According to these “human” christologies, Jesus was typically endowed with spirit or power from on high, but never ceased to be human.

Irenaeus probably obtained a copy of the updated Syntagma on his visit to Rome in 177 CE. By that time, Irenaeus may have already written his attack on the followers of Valentinus in AH 1. Between 178–188 CE, Irenaeus incorporated the updated Syntagma in AH 1.23–7 and updated it himself in an effort to connect Valentinians with the Christian figures (from Simon to Marcion) already blacklisted in Justin’s Syntagma.

It is the anonymous updater, then, who probably wrote the bulk of the Carpocrates report, and he or she did so between 165–177 CE. This fairly narrow window of time is supported by the dating of Celsus, who refers to “Marcellinians” about 177 CE. Hegesippus, moreover, was the first Christian to mention Carpocratians (among Menandrians, Marcionites, Basilideans, Valentinians, and Saturninians), evidently at Rome, between 174–189 CE.¹² In short, by the late 170s and early 180s, Carpocratians were receiving significant press, perhaps due to the report about them in the updated Syntagma.

The accuracy of the Carpocrates report

Having sketched the history of the Carpocrates report, we can inquire about its accuracy. Perhaps it goes without saying that one should cultivate a healthy skepticism about the accuracy of a polemical text. To be sure, a polemical attack is rarely a complete fabrication; instead, it mixes true and false statements to arrive at a plausible account. What we know is that Marcellina came to Rome in the late 150s or early 160s CE. The anonymous updater of the Syntagma and Irenaeus both had Roman connections. What they knew about Carpocrates was probably learned in Rome primarily through direct and indirect interactions with Marcellina’s group. Irenaeus, it seems, is the only one to mention that he had Carpocratian treatises, unless he was merely repeating what the Syntagma’s updater had written. Nevertheless, Irenaeus never directly quoted Carpocratian writings—with the possible exception of Jesus’s “parable” (AH 1.25.5). We do not know if this parable came from a specifically Carpocratian gospel, or from some other gospel, treatise, anthology, or doxography (see the Commentary on AH 1.25.4–5 below).

Much of the information about Carpocratians available to Irenaeus and the anonymous updater might have been little more than hearsay. No one in Rome or Gaul, it seems, had direct access to the founder Carpocrates and to Carpocratians in Alexandria. This means that nothing attributed to Carpocrates and his immediate followers can be accepted without question. As is common in heresiology, moreover, the accuracy of the reports tends to degrade over time due to the common polemical techniques of abridgment, expansion by inference, exaggeration, character assassination, and so on.

Later reports

In the generation after Irenaeus, at least three authors took over and adapted his report. The best known among these was Tertullian, who wrote his work On the Soul sometime between 210 and 213 CE.¹³ Lesser known is the Refutator, an anonymous Roman bishop who completed a ten-book polemic (the Refutation of All Heresies [Ref.]) about 222 CE. Even lesser known is the author of Against All Heresies (AAH)—usually called Pseudo-Tertullian—whose work was translated into Latin probably sometime in the late third or fourth century.

Based on the similarities of AAH and two other heresiological catalogs—the Panarion of Epiphanius, and the Diverse Haeresis (Div. Haer.) of Filastrius (both late fourth century), Lipsius argued that they all went back to a common source, namely the lost Syntagma of Thirty-Two Heresies (hereafter Syntag32) summarized by Photius in the ninth century CE (Bibliotheca codex 121).¹⁴ Lipsius ascribed Syntag32 to “Hippolytus,” who was not the same person, he believed, as the author of the Refutation.¹⁵ The Refutator mentioned that he wrote a less-detailed anti-heresy text before he wrote the Refutation (Ref. Pref. ⸹1), but he did not call it a Syntagma Against 32 Heresies.

In this commentary, I will accept the part of Lipsius’s theory that Against All Heresies (Pseudo-Tertullian), Epiphanius’s Panarion, Filastrius’s Diverse Heresies all go back to Syntag32. I am, however, sympathetic toward the view that the author of Syntag32 and Ref. is in fact the same man—an anonymous Roman church leader who was not identical to the eastern biblical exegete Hippolytus.¹⁶ Syntag32 can probably be dated to circa 205 CE. It recycled large portions of Irenaeus’s AH 1, even if it added other sects and details. Syntag32 was probably no more reliable than Irenaeus, as it shows no additional use of Carpocratian sources.¹⁷ Syntag32 was abridged, translated into Latin, and eventually found its way into the works of Tertullian as AAH (hence the name “Pseudo-Tertullian”). Epiphanius, bishop of Salamis on Cyprus, used the Syntag32 or its abridgment in the late fourth century CE. At the same time, most of his “new” details about Carpocrates seem to be his own tendentious inferences and rhetorical expansions. Filastrius, another late fourth century heresiologist writing in north Italy, also used the Syntag32—or its abridgment—though he also seems to have also depended on Epiphanius’s Panarion (or its summary, called the Anacephalaeoses).¹⁸

All these sources (Ref., AAH, Pan., Div. Haer.) must be used with caution. They all in some way go back to Irenaeus, whose heresy catalog (AH 1) effectively replaced Justin’s Syntagma. To judge their similarities and differences, it seems best, in what follows, to put these texts in parallel columns. My commentary itself, however, will focus on Irenaeus’s report, except of course in cases where Irenaeus did not include certain data which is provided by Syntag32 (judged from later reports). As in Chapter 1, my overall goal is not to reconstruct the perspective(s) of Irenaeus or his heresiographical heirs, but to shed light on Carpocratian teaching as it was understood by Carpocratians in the second century CE.¹⁹

Carpocratian theology

Text and translation

Irenaeus, AH 1.25.1	AAH 3.1	Epiphanius, Pan. 27.1	Filastrius, Div. Haer. 35.1
Carpocrates autem et qui ab eo	Carpocrates praeterea hanc tulit sectam	Καρποκρᾶς τις ἕτερος γίνεται, συστήσας ἑαυτῷ ἀθέμιτον διδασκαλεῖον	Carpocras nomine surrexit
Carpocrates and his followers	Carpocrates, furthermore, maintained this school	There was a certain Carpocrates, who established for himself a sacrilegious school	One named Carpocrates arose

Commentary

Carpocrates’s followers in Irenaeus became a “school” (διδασκαλεῖον) in Epiphanius, which is probably the word translated sectam in AAH. Epiphanius called Carpocrates’s “school” ἀθέμιτον. This is one of Epiphanius’s favorite polemical adjectives which he applied generously throughout his chapter on Carpocrates (Pan. 27). As noted by Einar Thomassen, heresiographers tended to call the social formations of their opponents “schools,” to define them “as a pagan type of institution or as a deviant faction with illegitimate claims.”²⁰ Philosophers formed schools, and heresiologists liked to caricature their opponents as thinkers, highly—if not entirely—influenced by philosophical currents (Irenaeus, AH 2; Epid. 2). If Carpocratians did form a “school” or at least a “school of thought” at Rome, they were no less a religious formation with initiatory rites and liturgical practices (as we shall see).²¹

Text and translation

AAH 3.1	Epiphanius, Pan. 27.2.1	Filastrius, Div. Haer. 35.1
unam esse dicit virtutem in superioribus principalem	οὗτος δὲ πάλιν ἄνω μὲν μίαν ἀρχὴν λέγει καὶ πατέρα τῶν ὅλων ἄγνωστον καὶ ἀκατονόμαστον ἴσα τοῖς ἄλλοις εἰσάγειν βούλεται.	et ipse dicens unum principium, de quo principio, id est de deo
He (Carpocrates) says that there is a single chief power in the upper regions	He (Carpocrates) again says that there is a single principle above, a Father of the universe, unknown and unnamed, wanting to introduce the same things as the others	He (Carpocrates) says that there is a single principle. From this principle, that is from God

Commentary

Carpocrates’s “single principle” or “chief power” (AAH) is missing in Irenaeus, probably because Irenaeus wanted to skirt around Carpocratian monism and emphasize the plurality of world-making agents. Alternatively, the author of Syntag32, the presumed source of AAH, Pan., and Div. Haer. had additional information clarifying that Carpocratians upheld a single principle.

The single Carpocratian principle was not an abstract philosophical entity, but the Carpocratian “God” (Filastrius) and “Father of the universe” (Epiphanius). Carpocratians evidently believed in a single God, under whom were multiple powers. In this respect, the Carpocratian position did not much differ from the structure of incipient catholic theology which posited a Father God, a Logos, a Holy Spirit, together with a host of other spirits (that is, demons and angels), all in a multi-layered hierarchy.

The language of a single principle agrees with the “monadic gnosis” known from Clement’s report on Epiphanes (Strom. 3.2.5.3, with Commentary in Chapter I). Epiphanes’s On Justice also confirms the idea that the Carpocratian deity was a Father and creator. Epiphanes, alluding to Plato (Tim. 28c), called his God “the maker and Father of all” (ὁ ποιητής τε καὶ πατὴρ πάντων, in Clement, Strom. 3.2.7.1). Epiphanius called the Carpocratian God “the Father of the universe” (πατέρα τῶν ὅλων), a common Jewish and Christian synonym for the creator or source of all (cf., e.g., Philo, Opif. 72; Justin Martyr, Dial. 56.15; Clement, Paed. 1.7.53.1).

Epiphanius added that the Carpocratian God was “unknown and unnamed” (ἄγνωστον καὶ ἀκατονόμαστον). These seem to be titles that Epiphanius affixed to make Carpocratians accord with Epiphanius’s other opponents (note his πάλιν and ἴσα τοῖς ἄλλοις). Epiphanius, for instance, ascribed an “unknown God” to Marcus the Valentinian (Pan. 34.17.10 [Holl 2.33.24]), and to “Cerdo” (Pan. 41.1.6 [Holl 2.91.7]). At the same time, ἄγνωστος is an epithet for God that Epiphanius himself employed (Ancoratus 32.6).

Adelin Rousseau and Louis Doutreleau argued that Epiphanius’s reading ἄγνωστον “seems more plausible” (SC 263:287), but that is not the case. Epiphanius often altered his received text to suit his purposes. In this case, God as ἄγνωστος accords with Epiphanius’s concept of a “heretical” super God, and it is this adjective that Epiphanius will employ consistently throughout Panarion 27 for the Carpocratian God in place of the ἀγένητος in Irenaeus (see the following) and others.²²

Text and translation

Irenaeus, AH 1.25.1	Ref. 7.32.1	AAH 3.1	Epiphanius, Pan. 27.2.1	Filastrius, Div. Haer. 35.1
mundum quidem et ea quae in eo sunt ab angelis multo inferioribus ingenita patre factum esse dicunt	Καρποκράτης τὸν μὲν κόσμον καὶ τὰ ἐν αὐτῷ ὑπὸ ἀγγέλων πολὺ ὑποβεβηκότων τοῦ ἀγενήτου πατρὸς γεγενῆσθαι λέγει	Ex hac prolatos angelos atque virtutes, quos distantes longe a superioribus [virtutem] mundum istum in inferioribus partibus condidisse	τὸν δὲ κόσμον καὶ τὰ ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ ὑπὸ ἀγγέλων γεγενῆσθαι, τῶν πολύ τι [ὑπὸ] τοῦ πατρὸς ἀγνώστου ὑποβεβηκότων·	de deo, prolationes factae sunt, inquit, angelorum atque virtutum; quae autem virtutes deorsum 23 sunt, fecerunt creaturam istam visibilem ubi nos, inquit, consistimus
They say that the world and its contents were made by angels lower by far than the unborn Father	Carpocrates says that the world and its contents were made by angels far lower than the unborn Father	From this power, angels and powers were emitted, separate by far from the upper regions, and they created this world in the lower regions	The world and its contents have been made by angels, much lower than the unknown Father	From God there came about emanations, he says, of angels and powers. These powers exist below, and they made this visible creation where we, he says, exist

Commentary

Irenaeus probably omitted data about the Carpocratian single principle/God. Yet even for Irenaeus, the Carpocratian God was still a singular “Father” (of humans, the cosmos, or both), and “unborn”—epithets of God with which Irenaeus himself employed (e.g., AH 1.10.1; Epid. 5).

The presence of world-making angels (AAH and Filastrius add “powers”)²⁴ does not in itself undermine the idea of God as creator, since God could create through subordinates. Angels were, for most Christians, lower than God on the ontological scale, but higher than humans. Irenaeus and his heirs preferred to give the impression that Carpocratian angels were independent agents—acting like gods in their own right—but this was probably not the case. In Plato’s Timaeus (41a–2a), the “young gods” work with the mortal aspects of the cosmos, but their work did not undermine the work and plan of the ultimate “Creator” (Δημιουργός). Both Christians and Jews commonly viewed angels as helpers in creation.²⁵ Epiphanius made this point himself: through God’s “knowledge and goodwill he has made what they [angels] have dared to make” (Pan. 27.7.2).

Due in large part to Irenaeus, angelic creation became a staple “gnostic” doctrine in heresiological texts.²⁶ Irenaeus attributed the doctrine of angelic creation to Simon (AH 1.23.2), Saturninus (1.24.1), and to Basilides (1.24.3). Readers of Against Heresies are thus primed to expect (and perhaps accept) this doctrine for Carpocrates as well. Irenaeus later reinforced his point that “the followers of Saturninus, Basilides, and Carpocrates, and the rest of the gnostics” asserted angelic creation (AH 2.31.1). Here the addition of “the gnostics” is important since it indicates that Irenaeus worked with a preunderstanding of his enemies. Carpocrates supported angelic creation, at least in part, because, according to Irenaeus, Carpocrates was already categorized as a “gnostic.” In this framework, Carpocrates’s theology of creation was not so much understood as he was pigeonholed into a polemical framework.

Accordingly, angelic creation should not immediately be accepted for Carpocrates. Epiphanes, judging from his surviving work, seems to have known nothing about angelic creators. He spoke of a single God who was also the creator of all nature (Strom. 3.2.6.1–4, with Commentary in Chapter 1). Since Epiphanes is the only Carpocratian whose writings we have—albeit in excerpts—they take priority over Irenaeus, who here did not quote a Carpocratian text. One might speculate that Carpocratians at Rome had a different theology of creation than Epiphanes, but we have no direct evidence to support this hypothesis.

The Carpocratian understanding of Jesus

Text and translation

Irenaeus, AH 1.25.1.	Ref. 7.32.1.	AAH 3.1	Epiphanius, Pan. 27.2.2–3	Filastrius, Div. Haer. 35.2–3
Iesum autem ex Ioseph natum, et cum similis reliquis hominibus fuerit, distasse a reliquis secundum id quod anima eius, firma et munda cum esset, commemorata fuerit, quae visa essent sibi in ea circumlatione quae fuisset ingenito deo.	τὸν δὲ Ἰησοῦν ἐξ Ἰωσὴφ γεγενῆσθαι, καὶ ὅμοιον τοῖς ἀνθρώποις γεγονότα, δικαιότερον τῶν λοιπῶν γενέσθαι. τὴν δὲ ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ, εὔτονον καὶ καθαρὰν γεγονυῖαν, διαμνημονεῦσ-αι τὰ ὁρατὰ μὲν αὐτῇ ἐν τῇ μετὰ τοῦ ἀγενήτου θεοῦ περιφορᾷ.	Christum non ex virgine Maria natum, sed ex semine Ioseph hominem tantummodo genitum, sane prae ceteris iustitiae cultu, vitae integritate meliorem. Hunc apud Iudaeos passum, solam animam ipsius in caelo receptam, eo quod et firmior 27 et robustior ceteris fuerit; ex quo colligere28 tentata. 29	2. Ἰησοῦν δὲ τὸν κύριον ἡμῶν ἀπὸ Ἰωσῆφ λέγει γεγε- ννῆσθαι, καθάπερ καὶ πάντες ἄνθρωποι ἐκ σπέρματος ἀνδρὸς καὶ γυναικὸς ἐγε-ννήθησαν. εἶναι δὲ αὐτὸν ὅμοιον τοῖς πᾶσι, βίῳ διενηνοχέναι, σωφροσύνῃ τε καὶ ἀρετῇ καὶ βίῳ διακαιοσύνης. ἐπειδὴ δέ, φησίν, εὔτονον ἔσχε ψυχὴν παρὰ τοὺς ἄλλους ἀνθρώπους. 3. καὶ ἐμνημόνευεν τὰ ὁραθέντα ὑπ’ αὐτῆς ἄνω, ὅτε ἦν ἐν τῇ περιφορᾷ τοῦ ἀγνώστου πατρός.	2. Christum autem dicit non de Maria virgine et divino spiritu natum, sed de semine Ioseph hominem natum arbitratur, deque eo natum carnaliter, sicut omnes homines, suspicatur. 3. Qui post passionem, inquit, melior inter Iudaeos vita integra et conversatione inventus est.
Jesus was born from Joseph, and though he was similar to other people, he differed from the others in that his soul, which was steadfast and pure, remembered the things shown to it in that revolution when it was with the unborn God.	Jesus was born from Joseph. Though he was like human beings, he was more just than other (people). Ηis soul, born vigorous and pure, remembered the things visible in the revolution with the unborn God.	Christ was not born from the virgin Mary, but was generated from the seed of Joseph as a mere human. Although he excelled others by his cultivation of justice, and was better by virtue of his blamelessness in life. He suffered among the Jews. Only his soul was received in heaven because it was stronger and more steadfast than the rest, by means of which it attempted to recollect.	Our Lord Jesus, he says, was born from Joseph just as also all humans were born from the seed of a man and a woman. He was like unto all (people), though in life he excelled in self-control, virtue, and in his life of justice. This was because he had, he says, a vigorous soul in comparison to other people. 3. (His soul) also remembered the things seen by it above, when it was in the revolution of the unknown Father.	He says that Christ was not born from the virgin Mary and the divine spirit, but was considered a man born from the seed of Joseph, from which it was suspected that he was born carnally, just like all people. 3. After his suffering, he says, he was found among the Jews with a life superior in its integrity and habits.

Commentary

According to Irenaeus, Jesus was “similar” (similis, translating ὅμοιος) to other people. The term ὅμοιος is ambiguous, however, meaning “like” or effectively “equal.” For Irenaeus, it would not be noteworthy for the Carpocratian Jesus to be “like” other people; thus he probably meant something closer to “equal.” Heresiologists took offense at the Carpocratian idea that nothing ontologically distinguished the soul of Jesus from that of other humans. They excoriated what later came to be known as “psilanthropism,” or the view that Jesus was only human (Ref. 7.35.2). Stereotypical “psilanthropism” seems to be reflected in the language of “a mere human” (hominem tantummodo in AAH). Yet for Carpocrates, Jesus’s soul was probably divine on some level, as were all human souls in Platonist teaching (Alcinous, Didasc. 16.2; SH 23.14–21). Jesus’s soul, then, was never “merely” human, even if Jesus was born in the normal human way (with a human father).

One suspects that the Jesuology of Carpocrates has here been conformed, to some degree, to what we find in Irenaeus’s report about Cerinthus and “Ebionites,” who come immediately after Carpocrates in AH (1.26.1–2). For Cerinthus, it was putatively impossible for Jesus to have been born from a virgin; he was “born the son of Joseph and Mary like all other people, and he excelled every person in justice, self-control, and wisdom.” Later heresiographers applied some of this language to their reports on Carpocrates. (“Mary,” for instance, appears in the reports of AAH and Filastrius; and self-control appears in Epiphanius’s report). Epiphanius in particular conformed Carpocrates to Cerinthus, a tactic that influenced his later reports (Pan. 28.1.1–2; 30.14.1–4).

Rousseau and Doutreleau argue that distasse in Irenaeus represents the Greek word διαφορώτερον (SC 263:287), which may be supported by βίῳ διενηνοχέναι in Epiphanius. The Refutator, perhaps already conflating data from the Cerinthus report, wrote that Carpocrates’s Jesus was δικαιότερον τῶν λοιπῶν (“more just than other people”). Epiphanius supports the Refutator by writing that Jesus also excelled “in a life of justice” (βίῳ διακαιοσύνης; cf. iustitiae cultu in AAH). We need not credit Rousseau and Doutreleau who argue that δικαιότερον in the Refutation does not accord with Jesus’s rejection of Jewish law (SC 263:287). Epiphanes’s On Justice shows that Jewish law was in part considered to be a form of human law, and not the measure of true, divine justice (Clement, Strom. 3.2.9.3, with commentary in Chapter 1).

Jesus’s superior righteousness is explained by the vigor and purity of his soul. Thanks to the Refutator and Epiphanius, we know that firma in Irenaeus translates εὔτονον, literally “well-tensed.” It was a term with a Stoic ring (SVF 3.473; cf. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 1.14.2; 6.30.2). For Stoics, a well-tensed pneuma (the substance of soul) was an intelligent pneuma. Interestingly, εὔτονος is the same word Epiphanes used to describe the “vigorous” desire that God put in males for the propagation of humanity (Clement, Strom. 3.2.8.3). Original purity of soul is an idea that goes back to Plato. Souls are born pure, and are stained by their own irrational desires (Cratylus 404a; Phaedo 67a–c; Alcinous, Didasc. 16.2; cf. SH 23.14–21).

The strength and purity of Jesus’s soul allowed him to remember what he had seen when it traveled with the unborn God. Reference to memory (διαμνημονεῦσαι in Ref.; ἐμνημόνευεν in Epiphanius) recalls Plato’s doctrine of recollection (ἀνάμνησις), namely that what souls learn on earth is actually—and often unknowingly—recalled from their preexistent state(s) (Plato, Meno 81b–6b; Phaedo 66b, 75a–6e). Most souls are oblivious of their previous states, but purer souls like Jesus remember what they saw above (Plato, Phaedrus 249c).

Irenaeus later attacked the Carpocratian theory of transmigration by arguing that their souls do not remember their previous deeds due to Plato’s “cup of forgetfulness” (AH 2.33.1–2). Yet Plato made clear that only unwise souls overdrank from the “river of forgetfulness” (which, incidentally, no vessel can hold, οὗ τὸ ὕδωρ ἄγγειον οὐδὲν στέγειν, Resp. 621a). Carpocratian souls, however, were not unwise. If they came from the same “revolution” (περιφορά) as Jesus (AH 1.25.2), then they would also, like Jesus, remember events from their previous lives, just like Pythagoras (Iamblichus, Pyth. vit. 14.63) and Empedocles (DK 31 B117; cf. Plato, Phaedo 81d).

The image of a “revolution” or encircling motion (περιφορά) on the rim of the universe derives from Plato’s Phaedrus 247b–9c (cf. Resp. 10.616c). In this passage, the gods behold true (invisible and supercelestial) reality, feasting on wisdom and knowledge. Souls which imitate the gods maintain their super-earthly state, whereas most through forgetfulness or wrongdoing fall into material bodies. It takes ten thousand years and a minimum of ten incarnations of righteous living for most souls to win their place back in heaven. Philosophers require only three lives, according to Plato, for they best of all recall the reality they saw in heaven (Phaedrus 249a).

One might suspect that, for Carpocrates, the “unborn God” stands in for Plato’s supercelestial reality (sometimes called “the Good”). The role of Zeus as leader of the royal souls who follow him (Phaedrus 247a) would then, for Carpocrates, be played by Jesus. Jesus had a philosophic soul, but more than a philosophic soul. He did not need Plato’s three incarnations to attain purity. Apparently, he accomplished everything in a single incarnation and modeled this superior way of life for other human beings.

Both AAH and Filastrius seem to have an eye on canonical Luke (1:35) when they claim that Carpocrates denied the virgin birth (Filastrius added “by the Holy Spirit”). It is not clear, however, that Carpocrates, in the early second century CE, had access to Luke in its present form or knew the traditions of Jesus’s birth that were later canonized. AAH and Filastrius also continue the story of Jesus until his “suffering amidst the Jews,” which apparently meant his death on the cross. It is only at his death, according to Filastrius, that the purity and vigor of Jesus’s soul are decisively revealed. The author of AAH added that Jesus’s pure soul left its mortal body behind and ascended immediately to heaven. The example of Jesus is again paradigmatic and shows that salvation is for the soul alone (see commentary below on AH 1.25.6).

Text and translation

Irenaeus, AH 1.25.1	Ref. 7.32.1	Epiphanius, Pan. 27.2.3–6
et propter hoc ab eo missam esse ei virtutem, uti mundi fabricatores effugere posset et per omnes transgressa et in omnibus liberata ascenderet ad eum, et eas quae similia ei amplecterentur similiter.	καὶ διὰ τοῦτο ὑπ’ ἐκείνου αὐ(τῇ) καταπεμφθῆναι δύναμιν, ὅπως τοὺς κοσμοποιοὺς ἐκφυγεῖν δι’ αὐτῆς δυνηθῇ, [ἦν] καὶ διὰ πάντων χωρήσασαν ἐν πᾶσί τε ἐλευθερωθεῖσαν ἐληλύθεναι πρὸς αὐτόν, τὰ ὅμοια αὐτῆς ἀσπαζομένη.	3. ἀπεστάλθαι ὑπὸ τοῦ αὐτοῦ πατρός, φησίν, εἰς τὴν αὐτοῦ ψυχὴν δυνάμεις, 4. ὅπως τὰ ὁραθέντα αὐτῇ ἀναμνημονεύσασα καὶ ἐνδυναμωθεῖσα φύγῃ τοῦς κοσμοποιοὺς ἀγγέλους ἐν τῷ διὰ πάντων χωρῆσαι τῶν ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ πραγμάτων καὶ πράξεων τῶν ὑπὸ τῶν ἀνθρώπων γινομένων καὶ ἐν παραβύστῳ ἀτόπων ἔργων καὶ ἀθεμίτων, 5. καὶ ὅπως διὰ πασῶν τῶν πράξεων ἐλευθερωθεῖσα ἡ αὐτὴ ψυχή, φησί, τοῦ Ἰησοῦ ἀνελθῃ πρὸς τὸν αὐτὸν πατέρα τὸν ἄγνωστον, τὸν δύνάμεις αὐτῇ ἀποστείλαντα ἄνωθεν, ἵνα διὰ πασῶν τῶν πράξεων χωρήσασα καὶ ἐλευθερωθεῖσα διέλθοι πρὸς αὐτὸν ἄνω. 6. οὐ μὴν δὲ ἀλλὰ καὶ τὰς ὁμοίας αὐτῃ ψυχάς τὰ ἴσα αὐτῇ ἀσπασαμένας, τὸν αὐτὸν τρόπον ἐλευθερωθείσας ἄνω πτῆναι πρὸς τὸν ἄγνωστον πατέρα, ἐν τῷ τὰς πάσας πράξεις πραξάσας ὁμοίως <τε> τῶν πάντων ἀπαλλαγείσας λοιπὸν ἐλευθερωθῆναι.
For this reason, a power was sent from him (God) so that it (Jesus’s soul) could evade the world-makers, pass through all things, and when freed from all things, ascend to him (God), and similarly those souls who embrace similar things as it (Jesus’s soul).	For this reason, the Unborn sent down a power to his soul, so that, through it, Jesus’s soul might be able to escape the world-makers, and so that, when Jesus’s soul had passed through all things, and had been freed from all, it might come to him (God), greeting the things similar to it.	3. By this same Father, he says, powers were sent into his soul 4. so that it might remember the things shown to it and, when empowered, escape the world-making angels by proceeding through all deeds and actions done in the world by humans, even strange and sacrilegious deeds in private. 5. And so that the very soul of Jesus, he says, freed from all deeds, might ascend to the unknown Father himself, powers were sent to him from above, so that (his soul), passing through all deeds, and freed (from them), might pass through to him above. 6. Not only that, but the souls like it (Jesus’s soul), who embrace the same things as it, are in the same way freed to fly above to the unknown Father. By practicing all the deeds, they are likewise delivered from them all, and finally freed.

Commentary

Jesus’s soul was pure and vigorous by nature. At the same time, an element of grace or divine aid was still underscored by Carpocratians. It was not enough for Jesus’s soul to be able to remember the realities it beheld in its preexistent state. To overcome the world-makers—who, as we gather for the first time, are wicked—Jesus needed power sent down from the unborn God. (Epiphanius’s plural “powers” is probably secondary, anticipating the “powers” in Irenaeus’s next sentence.) The Refutator emphasized that through this power (δι’ αὐτῆς), Jesus was able to evade the world-makers.

Epiphanius noted that it was through the “powers” that Jesus learned to recollect. In effect, he reversed the logic of Irenaeus who reported that Jesus’s innately robust soul and ability to remember led to the bestowal of divine power. Any causal relationship between Jesus’s robust soul, his power to remember, and his reception of divine power is thus left unclear. Irenaeus seems to have underscored Jesus’s innate power, leading to the bestowal of divine power. Epiphanius’s reading emphasized divine grace enabling Jesus to remember.

We are never told exactly when the divine power was sent down to Jesus and one must take care not to conform Carpocrates’s understanding of Jesus to the reported views of Cerinthus or the Ebionites.³⁰ According to Irenaeus, Cerinthus taught: “After his baptism, Christ descended on him [Jesus] in the shape of a dove from the Authority that is above all things” (AH 1.26.1). The “power” in the Carpocrates report was by no means identical to the Cerinthian “Christ,” despite Jesus’s death cry in the gospel of Peter, “My power, my power, why have you forsaken me?” (5.19).³¹

I suspect that the Carpocratian position was probably closer to the one voiced by Seneca in his Epistles (41.5):

When a soul rises superior to other souls, when it is under control, when it passes through all things as if they were of small account (omnia tamquam minora transeuntem), when it smiles at our fears and at our prayers, it is stirred by a celestial power (caelestis potentia agitat). A thing like this cannot stand upright unless it be propped by the divine.

(trans. Gummere, modified)

Following Rousseau and Doutreleau (SC 264:333), Unger and Dillon translate Irenaeus’s per omnes transgressa as “having passed through all their domains” (ANF 55:87). Yet as Rousseau and Doutreleau point out (SC 263:288), omnes could be masculine and refer to the world-makers. Epiphanius paraphrased διὰ πάντων χωρήσασαν as διὰ πάντων πράξεων, a reading which is influenced by what comes later in Irenaeus’s report (AH 1.25.5, 1.31.2; 2.32.1). Transposing this material, Epiphanius altered and considerably expanded Irenaeus’s report here, making it seem as if Jesus performed sacrilegious deeds in secret. This statement collides head-on with the Carpocratian view that Jesus was just, pure, and ruler of his passions. To his credit, however, Epiphanius did underscore what seems to be an accurate Carpocratian view: that there was a close relationship of salvific imitation uniting Jesus and the believer. Whatever exactly Jesus performed, by imitating the actions of Jesus, Carpocratians realized their own salvation.³²

In the final clause, the Latin of Irenaeus differs from the Refutation in that the latter only speaks of Jesus’s soul embracing what is similar to it, whereas the Latin speaks of other souls like Jesus embracing similar things. The Latin is confirmed by Epiphanius’s paraphrase. The Refutator was more inclined to shorten the text of Irenaeus—a shortening that sometimes altered the meaning of his source. Jesus’s soul was clearly understood by the Carpocratians as a model for other souls. The Carpocratian understanding of Jesus provided the model for Carpocratian ethics.

That Jesus ascended to his Father above lower powers is staple Christian teaching (see, e.g., Eph 1:21; John 20:17; Gos. Peter 5.19). Jesus’s ascent in triumph over lower powers (cf. Col 2:15) was also paradigmatic for Carpocratian Christians. In all likelihood, everything about Jesus’s story was probably taken as a model by Carpocratians: his purity and justice, his recall of the heavenly vision, his reception of power from on high, his ascent above the earthly body, and his triumph over lower powers (emphasized by Epiphanius). In short—and as I will underscore—Jesus’s life was the blueprint for Carpocratian salvation and ethics.

Text and translation

Irenaeus, AH 1.25.1	Ref. 7.32.2	Epiphanius, Pan. 27.2.7
Iesu autem dicunt animam in Iudaeorum consuetudine nutritam contempsisse eos, et propter hoc virtutes accepisse, per quas evacuavit quae fuerunt in poenis passiones, quae inerant hominibus.	τὴν δὲ τοῦ Ἰησοῦ λέγουσι ψυχήν, ἐννόμως ἠσκημέ(ν)ην ἐν Ἰουδαϊκοῖς ἔθεσι, καταφρονῆσαι αὐτῶν, καὶ διὰ τοῦτο δυνάμεις ἐπιτετελεκέναι, δι’ ὧν κατήργησε τὰ ἐπὶ κολάσε<σ>ι πάθη προσόντα τοῖς ἀνθρώποις.	τὴν δὲ ψυχὴν τοῦ Ἰησοῦ ἐν τοῖς τῶν Ἰουδαίων ἔθεσιν ἄνατραφεῖσαν καταφρονῆσαι αὐτῶν καὶ διὰ τοῦτο δυνάμεις εἰληφέναι, δι’ ὧν τὰ ἐπὶ κολάσεσι πάθη προσόντα τοῖς ἄνθρώποις δυνηθεῖσα πρᾶξαι ὑπερβῆναι τοῦς κοσμοποιοῦς ἴσχυσεν.
They say, furthermore, that the soul of Jesus, though raised in the custom of the Jews, despised them (the Jews), and for this reason received powers through which he disabled the passions which inhered in human beings as punishments.	They say that the soul of Jesus, although lawfully trained in Jewish customs, despised them. For this reason, he performed deeds of power. Through these deeds, he disabled the passions present in human beings for their punishment.	The soul of Jesus, raised in Jewish customs, despised them, and for this reason received powers, through which it was able to practice the passions attached to human beings, and strong enough to transcend the world-creators.

Commentary

The Irenaean reading that Jesus was “raised” (nutritam) in Jewish customs is supported by Epiphanius (ἄνατραφεῖσαν). “Customs” seem to refer more or less to Jewish laws in the Torah. According to the Refutator and Epiphanius, Jesus despised “Jewish customs” (Ἰουδαϊκοῖς ἔθεσι). In the Latin, however, the plural eos refers to the Jews (Iudaeos) themselves, rather than to their “custom” (singular). In this respect, the Latin text seems to represent a more anti-Jewish reading than the other versions.

It is not said why Jesus despised Jewish customs. Yet if Jesus’s soul was just and pure, he evidently found Jewish customs to be in some ways unjust and impure. The fact that Jesus despised Jewish customs does not mean that he was antinomian (against law in general) or that all Carpocratians represented “radical antinomianism.”³³ As Epiphanes shows, the rejection of human law did not mean the rejection of divine and natural law. Jesus, whose soul was pure and just, chose to follow an unwritten, divine, and higher law instead of a finite, human, and written one. According to the likely contemporaneous Testimony of Truth (NHC IX,3 29.26–7), “no one living under the (Jewish) law is able to lift his gaze to the truth, for they cannot serve two masters (Matt 6:24)” (trans. Birger Pearson).

One might suppose that the δυνάμεις accepted by Jesus referred to his miracles, and this is certainly possible. In context, however, δυνάμεις also have an ethical nuance, for they allowed Jesus to conquer his passions. We can thus understand the δυνάμεις to include what we call moral virtues (Latin virtutes).

According to Plato, true philosophers “keep away from all bodily passions, master them and do not surrender themselves to them” (Phaedo 82c). Mastery of the passions results in living a just life (Tim. 42a–b; Alcinous, Didasc. 16.2). We can infer that Jesus’s mastery of the passions is what made him just.

Aristotle argued for metriopatheia—moderating the passions—a position developed by both Philo and Clement, among others.³⁴ According to Irenaeus and the Refutator, however, Jesus eliminated or disabled (evacuavit/κατήργησε) his passions, becoming passionless and unsuffering (ἀπαθής) like the Stoic sage.³⁵ The Carpocratian Jesus was one of the very few who maintained absolute purity and sinlessness. His soul was not sent here for punishment or purification. He was already pure and overcame his passions to manifest the kind of life Carpocratian Christians were meant to imitate.

Epiphanius reversed this reading so that Jesus was empowered to perform the passions. As the GCS editors of the Panarion note, this alteration could be mollified if πράξαι was emended to καταργῆσαι,³⁶ but there is no reason to repair the text. Epiphanius believed that, for Carpocratians, there is nothing bad by nature, so for Jesus to practice the passions would not be considered evil. In fact, it would be required for him to make his ascent to heaven. Epiphanius here distorted the Carpocratian position, to be sure, but he did so in accordance with what he thought was the logic of his opponents.

That passions were given for human punishment seems not to have originally been a Platonic idea. It is, however, a notion we find in Hermetic texts. CH 10.20 identifies the passion of impiety as the “greatest punishment” (μείζων κόλασις). CH 13.7 lists 12 individual passions which serve as punishments. In the Kore Kosmou (SH 23.46), the god Blame advises Hermes how to tame human hubris:

Teach them, then, to have eros for their projects so that they fear the bleakness of failure, so that they are tamed by biting grief when they fail to obtain their hopes. Let the niggling curiosity of their souls be cut down by lusts, fears, waves of grief, and deceitful hopes (ἐπιθυμίαις καὶ φόβοις καὶ λύπαις καὶ ἐλπίσι πλάνοις). Let continual love affairs take vengeance upon their souls, along with varied hopes and desires sometimes fulfilled, sometimes shattered, so that the sweet bait of success becomes a striving for more perfect evils.³⁷

The Carpocratian Jesus, by completely mastering his passions, surmounted all lusts, fears, griefs, and hopes, and so modelled a life without blame.

The imitation of Jesus

Text and translation

Irenaeus, AH 1.25.2	Ref. 7.32.3	Epiphanius, Pan. 27.2.8.
Eam igitur quae similiter atque illa Iesu anima potest contemnere mundi fabricatores archontas, similiter accipere virtutes ad operandum similia.	Τὴν οὖν ὁμοίως ἐκείνῃ τῇ τοῦ Χριστοῦ ψυχῇ δυναμένην καταφρονῆσαι τῶν κοσμοποιῶν ἀρχόντων ὁμοίως λαμβάνειν δύναμιν πρὸς τὸ πρᾶξαι τὰ ὅμοια.	οὐ μόνον δὲ αὐτὴν τὴν ψυχὴν τοῦ Ἰησοῦ τοῦτο δεδυνῆσθαι, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὴν δυναμένην διὰ τῶν πράξεων χωρῆσαι ὑπερβῆναι τοὺς κοσμοποιοὺς αὐτοὺς ἀγγέλους· καὶ αὐτὴ ἐὰν λάβῃ δυνάμεις καὶ τὰ ὅμοια πράξῃ καθάπερ ἡ τοῦ Ἰησοῦ, ὡς προεῖπον.
Accordingly, that soul which, in similar fashion to that soul of Jesus, is able to despise the world-making rulers, similarly receives powers for working similar things.	That soul which, empowered in the same way as the soul of Christ, despises the world-making rulers, similarly receives power to perform the same actions.	Not only is Jesus’s soul able to do this, but also the soul empowered to pass through deeds and transcend those world-creating angels. And it (the soul) ascends if it receives powers and performs like deeds, just as the soul of Jesus, as I said before.

Commentary

Archontas in the Latin transliterates the Greek, though in what follows the Latin translator will use principes (“rulers”/”princes”). The Refutator wrote that the soul receives “power” (δύναμιν) in this passage instead of “powers” (virtutes), as we find in Irenaeus. The plural is supported by Epiphanius.

Earlier in AH 1.25.1, Jesus received (moral and spiritual) powers to despise the world-makers. Here the despising of the world-makers leads to the reception of more power. If believers follow the path of Jesus, their ability to despise the world-makers is also a matter of grace, as is their reception of additional power after rejecting the world-makers.

Assuming this understanding is correct, what does it mean to despise the world-making rulers? At minimum, it indicates that Carpocratians recognized the superior, unborn God above the angelic rulers. Yet more, evidently, is implied. The angels are in some sense evil, and one might be led to think that “despising” Jewish law and the world-making angels makes the angels the authors of Jewish law. Yet Irenaeus did not say this. In AH 1.25.2, Irenaeus changed the language so that what is “despised” are the contents of this world (ea quae sunt hic). This seems to have been his own inference, or the inference of his source: if believers are to despise the makers of the world, then they are to despise the contents of this world. One should question this logic, however, since there is little evidence of Carpocratian world hatred. Indeed, if the heresiologists were right, then Carpocratians embraced the body and sexuality. Carpocratian anticosmism can be rejected even if one wishes to maintain that they had hostility toward the lower rulers (as many other early Christians did, e.g., Rom 16:20; 1 John 5:19–20; Eph 6:12).

The received “powers” (virtutes) in this passage are evidently the same “powers” in Against Heresies 1.25.1. They are, at least in part, moral powers (or virtues) allowing other humans to, like Jesus, conquer their passions. The “similar things” would logically refer to pure and righteous “deeds”—a word introduced by Epiphanius—such as the miracles and morally upright acts performed by Jesus during his life on earth.

Text and translation

Irenaeus, AH 1.25.2	Tertullian, On the Soul 23.2	Ref. 7.32.3–4	Epiphanius, Pan. 27.2.9–10
Quapropter et ad tantum elationis provecti sunt, ut quidam quidem similes se esse dicant Iesu, quidam autem adhuc et secundum aliquid illo fortiores, qui sunt distantes amplius quam illius discipulis, ut puta quam Petrus et Paulus et reliqui apostoli, hos autem in nulli deminorari ab Iesu.	Sed et Carpocrates tantundem sibi de superioribus vindicat, ut discipuli eius animas suas iam et Christo, nedum apostolis, et peraequent et cum volunt praeferant.	3. διὸ καὶ εἰς τοῦτο τὸ τῦφο<ν> 38 κατεληλύθασιν, ὥστε <τοὺς> 39 μὲν ὁμοί<ου>ς 40 αὐτῷ εἶναι λέγ<ειν> 41 τῷ Ἰησοῦ, τοὺς δ’ ἔτι καὶ δυνατωτέρους, τινὰς δὲ καὶ διαφορωτέρους τῶν ἐκείνου μαθητῶν, οἷον Πέτρου καὶ Παύλου καὶ τῶν λοιπῶν ἀποστόλων. 4. τούτους δὲ κατὰ μηδὲν ἀπολείπεσθαι τοῦ Ἰησοῦ·	9. ὅθεν εἰς τῦφον μέγαν οὗτοι ἐληλακότες οἱ ὑπὸ τοῦ ἀπατεῶνος τούτου ἀπατη-θέντες ἑαυτοὺς προκριτέο-υς ἡγοῦνται καὶ αὐτοῦ τοῦ Ἰησοῦ. 10. ἄλλοι δὲ ἐξ αὐτῶν οὐκ Ἰησοῦ φασιν, ἀλλὰ Πέτρου καὶ Ἀνδρέου καὶ Παύλου καὶ τῶν λοιπῶν ἀποστόλων ἑαυτοῦς ὑπερφερεστέρους εἶναι διὰ τὴν ὑπερβολὴν τῆς γνώσεως καὶ τὸ περισσότερον τῆς διαπράξεως διαφόρων διεξόδων· ἄλλοι δὲ ἐξ αὐτῶν φάσκουσι μηδὲν διενηνοχέναι τοῦ κυρίου ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ.
By this logic, they are driven by so great a degree of conceit, that some of them say that they are equal (or: similar) to Jesus, while others are yet in a certain respect stronger. There are those who go far beyond his own disciples, namely Peter, Paul, and the rest of the apostles, and these are in no way less than Jesus.	But also Carpocrates arrogates to himself so much from the superior (beings/regions) that he equalizes and—when they want—prefer the souls of their own disciples to Christ, not to mention the apostles.	Consequently, they have stooped to this conceit, as to say that some of their followers are equal to Jesus himself, while others are still more powerful than he, and some are even superior to his disciples—like Peter and Paul and the rest of the apostles. 4. These people do not in any respect fall short of Jesus.	Whence these people, driven to such conceit, are deceived by this deceiver in judging themselves better than Jesus himself. Some of them say that they are superior, not to Jesus, but to Peter, Andrew, Paul, and the rest of the apostles, on account of their superlative gnosis and the excess of their accomplishments of various (or: superior) escapes. Others from their group claim that they are no different from our Lord Jesus Christ.

Commentary

Τῦφος can refer to delusion, nonsense, or pride. Probably some combination of these meanings is implied here, even if the Latin translator underscored the third meaning (elatio). There is a semantic difference between the provecti sunt (“they are driven”) of Irenaeus and the Refutator’s κατεληλύθασιν (“they have stooped”). We cannot precisely determine Irenaeus’s original wording, though it seems clear that Epiphanius’s ἐληλακότες better represents the Greek underlying the Latin Irenaeus.

In this passage, Irenaeus specified at least three subgroups of Carpocratians, (who evidently did not include all Carpocratians):

1. those who say they are similar or equal to Jesus,

2. those who say they are stronger than Jesus, and

3. those who say they are better than Jesus’s disciples.

Irenaeus’s remarks here stand in tension with what he later says (AH 2.32.1), that Carpocratians “boast of having Jesus as their teacher (quem isti magistri gloriantur) and claim that he has a much better and stronger soul than the rest (et eum multo meliorem et fortiorem reliquis animam habuisse dicunt).” If Carpocratians said that Jesus’s soul was much better and stronger than their own, then it was not the case that they claimed to be equal or stronger than Jesus.

This point must always be remembered even as we try to discern the identities of groups (1)–(3). For those who putatively claimed to be equal with Jesus (group 1), one can ask: “equal with respect to what”? From the context, we have learned that Carpocratians underscored Jesus’s justice, his purity, and his ability to conquer the passions. Those equal to Jesus would then presumably be equally just, pure, and able to conquer their passions.

Those putatively “stronger” than Jesus (group 2) would evidently be even more just and more capable of subduing their passions. According to Irenaeus, there is an important qualification when it comes to this second group—“others are yet in a certain respect (secundum aliquid, apparently representing κατά τι) stronger.” Unger and Dillon, in their rendering of this passage, did not translate secundum aliquid.⁴² They followed Rousseau and Doutreleau, who dubiously considered the phrase to be dittography (SC 263:290). In the Refutation we find ἔτι καί, which is not the semantic equivalent of secundum aliquid. The phrase κατά τι cannot be called “an error of similarity” with ἔτι καί.⁴³ The limiting clause κατά τι is exactly the kind of detail that a heresiologist would omit (witness Epiphanius, who preserves neither ἔτι καί or κατά τι), as it makes the Carpocratian position seem all the more audacious.

If some Carpocratians did claim, “in a certain respect,” to be “stronger” than Jesus, it is important to determine in what respect. For background, we can turn to gospel texts probably available by the late second century CE. According to the gospel of John, Jesus said: “the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do, and in fact will do greater works than these” (John 14:12).⁴⁴ In the Apocryphon of James (NHC I,2), Jesus advised his followers, “If you are oppressed by Satan and persecuted and do the Father’s will, I [say] he will love you, make you my equal (ϥⲛϣⲱϣ ⲧⲏⲛⲉ ⲛⲙ︤︥ⲏⲉⲓ, 4.32–5.3), and consider you beloved through his providence and by your own choice.” In context, becoming Jesus’s equal means accepting suffering like Jesus suffered, “unlawfully condemned, crucified  reason.” Later in the Apocryphon of James, Jesus exhorts his disciples: “Become better than I” (ⲉⲣⲉⲧⲛ︥︥︤ⲥⲁⲧⲡ︦ ⲁⲣⲁⲉⲓ, 6.19), and a few lines later: “be prior to me (ⲁⲣⲓ ϣⲁⲣⲡ︦ ⲁⲣⲁⲉⲓ ϩⲱⲱⲧ), for this is how the Father will love you” (7.13–15).

In terms of “works” (ἔργα), it seems, the Jesus of these texts invited his followers to be “stronger” or “more capable” (δυνατωτέρους). In the various Acts of the Apostles, we see this theology played out: the apostles perform deeds greater and more frequent than Jesus. In the gospel of John, for instance, Jesus performs a single resurrection (John 11). In the Acts of John (mid-to-late second century CE), resurrection is one of John’s most common miracles—so common, in fact, it becomes almost banal.⁴⁵

As for Irenaeus’s group 3 (those who say they are better than Jesus’ disciples), “Peter and Paul” were probably added by early heresiologists (perhaps by Irenaeus himself). Peter and Paul became the distinctive apostles of Rome, where Marcellina’s group came to reside. Epiphanius added Andrew apparently for good measure, and gave what appears to be his own rendition of the Carpocratian rationale: “on account of their superlative gnosis and the excess of their accomplishments of various (or: superior) escapes.” To derive this rationale, Epiphanius apparently transposed information he had read elsewhere in Irenaeus. Irenaeus had accused the Marcosians of saying that they had greater gnosis than Peter, Paul, and the rest of the apostles (AH 1.13.6). The “escapes” (διεξοδοι) of the Carpocratians apparently refer to the breakthroughs of their souls past lower rulers, an element of Carpocratian soteriology that Epiphanius, rightly or wrongly, underscored.

Irenaeus did not say in what way some Carpocratians thought they excelled the apostles. One might hypothesize, based on the Carpocratian imitatio Iesu, that some Carpocratians claimed moral superiority to Peter and Paul. On one level, a moral superiority to Peter and Paul is not very impressive. Peter thrice denied he knew Jesus (Matt 26:34) and Paul was an accessory to murder (Acts 8:1). Even these apostles at the height of their holiness were still very much subject to human passions (Gal 5:12; Acts 13:10). Epiphanius’s alternative explanation, that Carpocratians claimed more gnosis than the apostles, and to have passed through more varied experiences might seem plausible. One suspects, however, that these are elements he gleans from other places (such as Irenaeus’s comment on the Marcosians, AH 1.13.6)—in which case they were not actual Carpocratian claims.

With regard to Irenaeus’s last clause (hos autem in nulli deminorari ab Iesu), grammatically, the hos, probably translating τούτους (Ref.), could refer to the apostles (“they [the apostles] are in no way less than Jesus”). In context, however, Irenaeus probably intended it as a kind of summary statement, indicating either (1) that those greater than the disciples felt themselves to be in no way less than Jesus, or (2) that all three groups—those putatively equal to Jesus, those stronger than Jesus, and those better than the apostles—thought that they in no way fell short of Jesus. The latter is a stronger claim, and if we accept it as what Irenaeus meant, then we must be wary of his polemical exaggeration. Irenaeus apparently wanted to underscore the “conceit” of all three Carpocratian groups claiming in some way to be assimilated to Jesus. The assimilation in view, however, was or at least included moral assimilation to Jesus’s justice, purity, and passionlessness (AH 1.25.1; cf. Plato, Theaet. 176b).

Text and translation

Irenaeus, AH 1.25.2	Tertullian, On the Soul 23.2	Ref. 7.32.4	Epiphanius, Pan. 27.2.11
Animas enim ipsorum ex eadem circumlatione devenientes et ideo similiter contemnentes mundi fabricatores, eadem dignas habitas esse virtute et rursus in idem abire. Si quis autem plus quam ille contempserat ea quae sunt hic, posse meliorem quam illum esse.	quas perinde de sublimi virtute conceperint despectrices 46 mundipotentium principatum.	τὰς δὲ ψυχὰς αὐτῶν, ἐκ τῆς ὑπερκειμένης ἐξουσίας παρούσας καὶ διὰ τοῦτο ὡσαύτως καταφρονούσας τῶν κοσμοποιῶν, [διὰ] τῆς αὐτῆς ἠξιῶσθαι δυνάμεως καὶ αὖθις εἰς τὸ αὐτὸ χωρῆσαι. εἰ δέ τις ἐκείνου πλέον καταφρονήσειεν τῶν ἐνταῦθα, δύνασθαι διαφορώτερον αὐτοῦ ὑπάρχειν.	αἱ γὰρ ψυχαὶ ἐκ τῆς αὐτῆς περιφορᾶς εἰσι καὶ ὁμοίως κατὰ τὴν τοῦ Ἰησοῦ πάντων καταφρόνησιν ποιησάμ-εναι <...>. καὶ <γὰρ> αἱ πᾶσαι, φησί, ψυχαὶ τῆς αὐτῆς δυναμεως ἠξιώθησαν ἧς καὶ ἡ τοῦ Ἰησοῦ ἠξίωται· διὸ καὶ ταύτα<ς> φασὶ χωρεῖν διὰ πάσης πράξεως, καθάπερ ἀμέλει καὶ ἡ τοῦ Ἰησοῦ διελήλυθεν. Εἰ δὲ καὶ τις πάλιν δυνηθείη ὑπὲρ τὸν Ἰησοῦν καταφρονῆσαι, διαφορώτερος ἔσται αὐτοῦ.
For their souls descend from the same revolution and therefore likewise despise the world-makers. They are held worthy of the same power and once again return to the same (place). Yet if someone despises even more than him the things that are here, this one can be better than him.	The souls (of Carpocratians) have likewise received from the power on high, (and so are) despisers of the world-controlling rulers.	Their souls have come here from the superior authority. For this reason, they too despise the world-makers, are worthy of the same power as Jesus, and return again to the same. And if someone despises the things here below more than him, this one can become superior to him (Jesus).	For those souls are from the same revolution and despise all in the same manner as Jesus.  all souls, he says, are counted worthy of the same power of which Jesus was deemed worthy. Accordingly, they say, these (souls) pass through every deed, just as, of course, the soul of Jesus passed through. And if in turn someone can despise more than Jesus, this one becomes superior to him.

Commentary

The Refutator modified the phrase ἐκ τῆς αὐτῆς περιφορᾶς to read ἐκ τῆς ὑπερκειμένης ἐξουσίας, evidently plucking a phrase from Irenaeus’s Cerinthus report (AH 1.26.1). This reading seems also to be represented by Tertullian’s de sublimi virtute.⁴⁷ The “world-makers” in Irenaeus become “world-controlling rulers” in Tertullian, perhaps translating κοσμοκράτορες (cf. Eph 6:12). This was not Carpocratian language. Tertullian’s memory probably blended various reports. It was the Valentinians, for instance, who called the devil κοσμοκράτωρ, while Marcion reserved this term for the creator (AH 1.1.10, 1.27.2).⁴⁸

The answer as to why some Carpocratians counted themselves equal and/or superior to Jesus here receives two responses. The first is ontological: souls descend from the same revolution as Jesus’s soul. The second we might call moral: just as Jesus, they despise the world-makers. Tertullian added a point implicit in Irenaeus: that it was because Carpocratians received divine power or grace that they found themselves capable of despising the false lords of this cosmos.

Regarding ontological parity with Jesus, the Carpocratian point seems to have been—not that Jesus’s soul is merely human—but that all souls are equally divine. At the same time, these equally divine souls can differ from each other in their degree of justice and purity. Jesus is special with regard to the justice and purity of his soul, leading him to remember more of the divine beauty and truth beheld in his pre-embodied state. Yet there are other souls who approximate, and perhaps match, Jesus in his strength and purity, because they traveled with him in the same revolution—namely, the revolution of souls who beheld divine beauty and truth with stability and serenity (Phaedrus 247a). These other souls who traveled with Jesus were probably not limited to Carpocratians. Carpocratians reportedly asserted that all souls would be saved (see below on AH 1.25.6), so they may have believed that all souls once traveled with Jesus in the heavenly revolution.

Above, Jesus “despised” Jewish custom (Irenaeus, AH 1.25.1), which may have been seen by Carpocratians as a this-worldly arrangement by angels (cf. Gal 3:19: “the law … was administered by angels by means of a mediator”). AAH in fact records that Carpocrates, like Cerinthus (AAH 3.2), affirmed that (Jewish) law was given by angels. Yet no other heresiographer makes this point. In fact, Epiphanius may indicate that Cerinthus differed from Carpocrates in his claim that the Jewish law was given by the angels (Pan. 28.1.3).

In referring to the rejection of “things here,” Irenaeus seems to have charged the Carpocratians with a generalized world hatred. Even if we accept his apparent inference—that despising the world-makers means despising the things in the world—we need not accept it as a general remark that Carpocratians despised everything in the world. We suspect Carpocratians rejected some human customs, in particular Jewish law. If they despised the world in a general sense as inferior to the world above, we can no more accuse them of world hatred than we can accuse the author of 1 John 2:15: “Do not love the world and the things in the world” (Μὴ ἀγαπᾶτε τὸν κόσμον μηδὲ τὰ ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ). “The world” here probably does not refer to material things, but to “worldly” sins, as manifested in human actions and institutions. The Carpocratian Epiphanes, at any rate, seems to have embraced the world by appealing to nature and natural law as revelations of the divine will (Strom 3.2.6.1–4, with commentary in Chapter 1). We cannot accept the blanket claim that Carpocratians despised the things of this world.

Jesus led the way for other souls. His example, it seems, enabled other souls to despise the world-makers, secure the power with which Jesus was endowed and ascend back to the same (place) as Jesus—namely the place of the unborn God that completely transcends this universe (cf. Gos Tr. [NHC I,3] 41.3–7; Gos Thom. [NHC II,2] 49–50; Hyp. Arch. [NHC II,4] 96.19–22). Jesus was the pathbreaker. By his example, apparently, other souls were able even more thoroughly to despise the lower rulers. In this rather narrow sense, evidently, Carpocratians could be “better” than Jesus. For Carpocratians, this would not mean ontologically better. All souls still maintain ontological equality, even if, during their earthly sojourn, they more thoroughly rejected the world rulers.

Accusations of “magic”

Text and translation

Irenaeus, AH 1.25.3	Ref. 7.32.5	Eusebius, HE 4.7.9	Epiphanius, Pan. 27.3.1
Artes enim magicas operantur et ipsi et incantationes philtra quoque et charitesia et paredros et oniropompos et reliquas malignationes, dicentes se potestatem habere ad dominandum iam principibus et fabricatoribus mundi huius, non solum autem, sed et his omnibus quae in eo sunt facta.	τέχνας οὖν μαγικὰς ἐξεργάζονται καὶ ἐπαοιδάς, φίλτρα τε καὶ χαριτήσια, παρέδρους τε καὶ ὀνειροπόμπους καὶ τὰ λοιπὰ κακουργήματα, φάσκοντες ἐξουσίαν ἔχειν πρὸς τὸ κυριεύειν ἤδη τῶν ἀρχόντων καὶ ποιητῶν τοῦδε τοῦ κόσμου, οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ τῶν ἐν αὐτῷ ποιημάτων ἁπάντων.	οἵ καὶ τοῦ Σίμωνος οὐχ ὥς ἐκεῖνος κρύβδην, ἀλλ’ ἤδη καὶ εἰς φανερὸν τὰς μαγείας παρ-αδιδόναι ἠξίουν, ὥς ἐπὶ μεγάλοις δή, μόνον οὔχὶ καὶ σεμνυνόμενοι τοῖς κατὰ περιεργίαν πρὸς αὐτῶν ἐπιτελουμένοις φίλτροις ὀνειορπομποῖς τε καὶ παρέδροις τισὶ δαίμοσιν καὶ ἄλλαις ὁμοιοτρόποις τισὶν ἀγωγαῖς·	ἐπιχειροῦσι δὲ οἱ τῆς ἀθεμίτου ταύτης σχολῆς παντοίας ἐπιχειρήσεις δεινῶν ἔργων καὶ ὀλετηρίων. Μαγεῖαι γὰρ παρ’ αὐτοῖς ἐπινενόηνται, ἐπῳδάς τε διαφόρους πρὸς πᾶσαν μηχανὴν ἐφηύραντο, [πρὸς] φίλτρα καὶ ἀγώγιμα. Οὐ μὴν δὲ ἀλλὰ καὶ παρέδρους δαίμονας ἑαυτοῖς ἐπισπῶνται, εἰς τὸ διὰ πολλῆς μαγγανείας ἐν ἐξουσίᾳ μεγάλῃ πάντων <γενέσθαι>, <ὥστε>, φησί, κυριεύειν ὡν τε ἄν ἐθέλοι ἕκαστος καὶ ᾗ πράξει ἐπιχειρεῖν τολμήσειε· δῆθεν ἑαυτοῦς ἐξαπ-ατῶντες πρὸς πληροφορίαν τῆς τετυφλωμένης αὐτῶν διανοίας, ὅτι αἱ τοιαῦτα ἐγχειρήσεις, κατισχύσασαι διὰ τῶν τοιόυτων πράξεων καὶ καταφρονήσασαι τῶν κοσμοποιῶν ἀγγέλων καὶ τῶν ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ, ὑπερβαίνουσι τῆν τῶν αὐτῶν μυθοποιῶν (οὐ γὰρ ἄν εἴποιμι κοσμοποιῶν) ἐξουσίαν, ὅπως ἄν τὴν ἄνω ἐλευθερίαν ἀσπάσωνται καὶ τὴν ἄνω πτῆσιν κτήσαιντο.
They themselves practice magic arts, incantations, love potions, spells for winning favor, assistants, dream senders, and other malign acts, claiming that they already have power to dominate the rulers and makers of this world—and not only them, but also all those things which are made in the world.	They also practice magic arts, incantations, love potions, spells for winning favor, assistants, dream senders, and all the other criminal acts, claiming that they already have authority to lord it over the rulers and makers of this world—and, still more, over everything made in the world.	These (Carpocratians), like Simon’s disciples—though not in secret like him, but out in the open—deigned to transmit acts of magic, as if wondrous deeds—though they’re not. They preen themselves on their elaborate accomplishment of love potions, dream senders, assistant demons, and other allurements of this type.	The members of this sacrilegious school contrive all sorts of contrivances, terrible and destructive works. They think up acts of magic and have invented various spells for every scheme, (namely) love charms and allurements. Not only this, they also draw to themselves assistant demons, so that through much jugglery they might (take) great authority over all, he says, and that each one might lord it over whomever they want and dare to undertake any deed. They deceive themselves, surely, to convince their blinded minds, because they have mastered such endeavors through such deeds and despise the world-making angels and the things in this world. They surpass their fabled (I won’t say world-making) authority, so that they can embrace the freedom above and obtain their flight above.

Commentary

If Carpocratians received the same power(s) as Jesus (AH 1.25.2), they may have claimed to do miracles akin to those he performed. In fact, Irenaeus will later say that Carpocratians, along with Simonians, performed “miracles” (virtutes, AH 2.31.2).

It is a common polemical technique to classify miracles as “magic.”⁴⁹ This strategy was part of a widespread vituperative rhetoric that defames and dismisses opponents as outsiders.⁵⁰ “In the Roman Empire the practice of magic was a criminal offense (Paulus, Sententiae V.23.14–18), and ‘magician’ was therefore a term of abuse.”⁵¹ As it happened, Christians of all stripes were often accused of “magic” (Origen, Cels. 1.6; 6.40–1; Tertullian, Ux. 2.5.2), and Christians regularly accused each other of “magic” (Eusebius, HE 3.26.4).⁵² We need not dwell on the hostile label “magic,” which can denote any ritual activity conceived as non-normative.⁵³

It is better to focus on the specific practices. Irenaeus listed five kinds of practices: incantationes, philtra, charitesia, paredros, and oniropompos. When criticizing Simon of Samaria, Irenaeus also listed such practices in slightly different language: incantations, love charms (amatoria, agogima), assistants (paredri), and dream senders (oniropompi) (AH 1.23.4). He also accused Basilides of using magic, by which he meant “incantations,” and the invocation of angelic names (AH 1.24.5). Finally, Irenaeus speculated that Marcus the Valentinian used a demon assistant (daemonem quendam paredram, AH 1.13.3) to prophesy. Some of the women who defected from Marcus reportedly claimed that Marcus captured them with “love potions and allurements” (amatoria et adlectantia) because they had fallen in love with him (AH 1.13.5).⁵⁴ One wonders how much of this language was stereotyped and simply recycled by Irenaeus and his heirs.

There is of course evidence for Christian rituals that involved incantations, love potions, angelic assistants, and dream senders (to pass on information or to tell the future).⁵⁵ Irenaeus himself accepted certain divination practices, namely prophecy through “visions” (AH 2.32.4). In the same context, Irenaeus accused Carpocratians of bringing forth “prepubescent boys whose eyes they can deceive by showing them illusory visions that cease immediately and do not last even for one moment” (AH 2.32.3).⁵⁶ This interesting testimony is unattested elsewhere—even in Irenaeus’s own earlier report—and cannot be verified (though cf. Ref. 4.28).

It is better to reclassify such behavior as part of what Stanley K. Stowers has called “the religion of everyday social exchange” (RESE).⁵⁷ This type of religion involved practices done in the home and on the street by the majority of residents in the Roman empire. Elite people and the literati may have denounced such practices as superstitious, but their values need not be reinscribed.⁵⁸ If Carpocratians engaged in the practices of the RESE, they probably hoped to appeal, like other religious entrepreneurs of the time, to the majority populations in Alexandria and Rome. These peoples of diverse ethnicity responded, in all likelihood, in a different way than Irenaeus. Irenaeus preferred a different kind of religion, what Stowers calls the religion of “literate religious experts” who engaged in “intellectual practices related to literate forms of cultural production.”⁵⁹

If we grant that Carpocratians claimed power over the angels, then they logically claimed control over matters governed by angels. Included in these matters were the human body and its passions. As followers of a just and pure Jesus who conquered his passions, Carpocratians likely asserted some kind of moral control over their bodies. Accordingly, I find it unlikely that Carpocratians were engaged in love charms, practices which were thought to awaken erotic feelings.⁶⁰ If Jesus was their model, then Carpocratians pursued control of these passions and likewise helped others obtain that mastery. Nonetheless, it is possible that Carpocratians would have made use of “assistants.” These would not have been wicked “demonic” assistants, as Eusebius and Epiphanius alleged, but angels subordinate to the power of the unborn God.⁶¹

Despite Irenaeus’s word malignationes (apparently representing κακουργήματα), it is tendentious to describe Carpocratian practice as malign (Epiphanius, according to his custom, added several more pejorative adjectives). Injurious spells like curses and binding practices are, significantly, not mentioned as part of the Carpocratian repertoire.⁶² Given that Carpocratians followed Jesus as their model, and that Jesus’s miracles were designed for good ends (healing and other benefits), then Carpocratians probably viewed their miraculous as beneficial. Despite Irenaeus’s subsequent claim that Carpocratian miracles did not benefit humans (neque ut benefici hominibus facientes, 2.31.2), Michael Syrus (twelfth century) claimed that Carpocratians performed “healings” (Chronicle 6.4).⁶³ And divinatory information obtained through dreams was commonly perceived as beneficial.

Carpocratians as scapegoats

Text and translation

Irenaeus, AH 1.25.3	Ref. 7.32.6	Eusebius, HE 4.7.10–11	Epiphanius, Pan. 27.3.3
Qui et ipsi ad detractationem 64 divini ecclesiae nominis, quemadmodum et gentes, a Satana praemissi sunt, uti secundum alium et alium modum quae sunt illorum audientes homines et putantes omnes nos tales esse, avertant aures suas a praeconio veritatis, aut et videntes quae sunt illorum omnes nos blasphement in nullo eis communicantes neque in doctrina neque in moribus neque in quotidiana conversatione.	οἵτινες καὶ αὐτοὶ εἰς διαβολὴν τοῦ θείου τῆς ἐκκλησίας ὀνόματος πρὸς τὰ ἔθνη ὑπὸ τοῦ Σατανᾶ προεβλήθησαν, ἵνα κατ’ ἄλλον καὶ ἄλλον τρόπον τὰ ἐκείνων ἀκούοντες ἄνθρωποι, καὶ δοκοῦντες ἡμᾶς πάντας τοιούτους ὑπάρχειν, ἀπο-στρέφωσι τὰς ἀκοὰς αὐτῶν ἀπὸ τοῦ τῆς ἀληθείας κηρύγματος, β{λέ}ποντες τὰ ἐκείνων ἅπαντα<ς> ἡμᾶς βλασφημῶσιν.	10. τούτοις δῆτα συνέβαινεν διακόνοις χρώμενον τὸν ἐπιχαιρεσίκακον δαίμονα τοὺς μὲν πρὸς αὐτῶν ἀπατ-ωμένους οἰκτρῶς οὕτως εἰς ἀπώλειαν ἀνδραποδίζεσθαι, τοῖς δ’ ἀπίστοις ἔθνεσιν πολλῆν παρέχειν κατὰ τοῦ θείου λόγου δυσφημίας περιουσίαν, τῆς ἐξ αὐτῶν φήμης εἰς τὴν τοῦ παντὸς Χριστιανὼν ἔθνους διαβολὴν καταχεομένης. 11. ταύτῃ δ’ οὖν ἐπὶ πλεῖστον συνέβαινεν τὴν περὶ ἡμῶν παρὰ τοῖς τότε ἀπίστοις ὑπόνοιαν δυσσεβῆ καὶ ἀτοπωτάτην διαδίδοσθαι, ὡς δὴ ἀθεμίτοις πρὸς μητέρας καὶ ἀδελφὰς μίξεσιν ἀνοσίαις τε τροφαὶς χρωμένων.	εἰσὶ δὲ ἐκ τοῦ Σατανᾶ παρεσκευασμένοι καὶ προβεβλημένοι εἰς ὄνειδος καὶ σκάνδαλον τῆς τοῦ θεοῦ ἐκκλησίας. ἐπέθεντο γὰρ ἑαυτοῖς ἐπίκλην Χριστιανοί. τοῦτο τοῦ Σατανᾶ παρασκευάσαντος πρὸς τὸ σκανδαλίζεσθαι τὰ ἔθνη δι’ αὐτῶν καὶ ἀποστρέφεσθαι τὴν τῆς ἁγίας τοῦ θεοῦ ἐκκλησίας ὠφέλειαν καὶ τὸ ἀληθινὸν κήρυγμα διὰ τὰς ἐκείνων ἀθεμιτουργίας καὶ ἀνηκέσ-του<ς> κακοπραγίας, ἐις τὸ τὰ ἔθνη κατανοῦντα αὐτῶν τὰ ἐπάλληλα ἔργα τῶν ἀθεμιτουργιῶν, νομίσαντα καὶ τοῦς τῆς ἁγίας τοῦς θεοῦ ἐκκλησίας τοιούτους εἶναι, ἀποστρέ-φειν ὡς καὶ προεῖπον τῆν ἀκοὴν ἀπὸ τῆς τοῦ θεοῦ κατὰ ἀλήθειαν διδασκα-λίας ἤ καὶ ὁρωντά τινας πάντας <ἡμὰς> ὁμοίως βλασφημεῖν. Καὶ τούτου ἕνεκα οἱ πλείους τῶν ἐθνῶν ὅπου δἄν ἴδωσι τοιούτους, οὔτε ἐπὶ κοινωνίᾳ ἡμῖν προσφέρονται ληψοδοσίας ἤ γνώμης ἤ ἀκοῆς λόγου θείου, οὔτε τὴν ἀκοὴν ἐντιθέασιν, ἐπτυρμένοι ἀπὸ τῆς τῶν ἀθεμίτων ἀνοσιουργίας.
These are the very people sent forth by Satan, just as the Gentiles, to slander the divine name of the church so that, in various ways, the people who are their hearers suppose that all of us are of the same character, turning away their ears from the declaration of truth. Or, when they see their deeds, that they might insult all of us, even though we have no communion with them in doctrine, morals, or daily conduct.	These are the very people who have been sent forth by Satan to slander the divine name of the church before the nations. They were emanated so that the people who listen to them in various ways—supposing that we are all of this character—might turn their ears from the preaching of the truth and, when they see their works, insult us all.	So it then happened that the demon rejoicing in evil used these servants in order to enslave to destruction those who are miserably deceived by them, and to provide to unbelieving nations abundant material for defaming the divine word, since the rumor from them spreads the slander to the whole tribe of Christians. 11. In this way, for the most part, it happened that an impious and outrageous suspicion spread about us among unbelievers, that we had sacrilegious sex with mothers and sisters and ate unholy foods.	They have been prepared and emitted from Satan for the shame and offense of God’s church, for they place on themselves the name “Christian.” This Satan has prepared to offend the Gentiles through them so that they reject the benefit of God’s holy church, along with the true proclamation on account of their sacrilegious and incurable crimes, so that the Gentiles take note of their unrelenting, sacrilegious deeds, supposing that those of God’s holy church are the same, and so that they turn away their ears, as I said, from God according to the truth of the teaching or when they see certain of them, they insult  all alike. And for this reason, most of the Gentiles, when they see people such as these, will not, joining with us who offer goods or opinions, or a lecture of the divine word; nor will they listen, since they are frightened by their unholy acts of these sacrilegious (people).

Commentary

It is not clear why Unger and Dillon say only that “some” of the Carpocratians, according to Irenaeus, have been sent forth by Satan (ACW 55:88). Nothing in the Latin or Greek text representing Irenaeus corresponds to “some” of them. As Rousseau points out, the Latin quemadmodum seems to reproduce ὡς, not πρός, as in the Refutation (SC 263:291). The Latin translation would apparently mean that the Gentiles, like the Carpocratians, are also sent forth by Satan to slander the church. It makes more sense to follow the Refutation here: the Carpocratians are putatively sent to the nations to slander the name of the church.

The appeal to Satanic inspiration was already traditional by Irenaeus’s time. Justin claimed that “demons,” since the ascent of Christ, “sent forth (προεβάλλοντο) people who called themselves gods, among whom are included Simon of Samaria, Menander of Antioch, and Marcion of Pontus. All three men, along with their followers, Justin specified, are called Christians (1 Apol. 1.26, cf. 54, 62, 66). One can say the same of Carpocratians, as Epiphanius in fact did.

The ascription of demonic inspiration is perhaps the ultimate way to exclude an opponent from Christian identity. It attempts to make insiders outsiders by making them into servants, not of God, but of God’s archenemy.⁶⁵ Satan is typically seen as the “father of lies” (John 8:48), and his task, according to Irenaeus and his heirs, is to deceive outsiders into thinking that all Christians are like Carpocratians.

In fact, it seems, outsiders were not deceived. First of all, anti-Christian writers did not focus the charge of incest and orgies on Carpocratians. All Christians were attacked with this blanket charge (see Clement, Strom. 3.2.5.1, 3.2.10.1 with commentary in Chapter 1). Moreover, the few outsiders who took note of Christian diversity, like Celsus, were more than capable of distinguishing “Harpocratians” and “Marcellinians” from other types of Christians (Origen, Cels. 5.62). Celsus was even able to distinguish several groups of Carpocratians in contradistinction to several other Christian groups (see what follows).

There were evidently numerous persons in the ancient world who shunned Christians for their putatively immoral practices, but pejorative rumors about Christians were not, it seems, inspired by Carpocratians Christians. After all, the rumors were spread in virtually all areas of the empire—including Asia Minor, North Africa, and Syria—areas where Carpocratians are unattested. It is noteworthy that Epiphanius repeated and expanded the charge about outsiders fearing Christians. One might suppose that, even by the 370s CE, fear of what went on in private Christian rituals still lingered among the general population. Alternatively, Epiphanius was adapting the language of his source in order to sound well-informed.

According to Irenaeus, as confirmed by the Refutator, the name of the church is “divine” (θεῖος). Eusebius was more comfortable in referring to “the divine word” (θείου λόγου). The adjective, when applied to the church, might simply be taken, with Epiphanius, as a synonym for “holy.”⁶⁶ In the context of Irenaeus’s (mainly) anti-Valentinian polemic in Against Heresies, however, a “divine” church is significant. For Valentinians, as Irenaeus describes them, Church (Ἐκκλησία) was indeed a divine entity, an aeon/eternity emitted by the Father or Depth (AH 1.1.1). Perhaps on some level the church, for Irenaeus, is divine insofar as it is made up of divinized Christians.⁶⁷

Text and translation

Irenaeus, AH 1.25.3	Epiphanius, Pan. 27.4.1–2
Sed vitam quidem luxoriosam, sententiam autem impiam <…> ad velamen malitiae ipsorum nomine abutuntur, «quorum iudicium iustum est» recipientium dignam suis operibus a deo retributionem.	1. εἰσὶ δὲ ἐν ἀσωτίᾳ διατελοῦντες οὗτοι καὶ πᾶν ὁτιοῦν ἐργαζόμενοι πρὸς εὐπάθειαν σωμάτων, ἡμῖν δὲ ὅλως οὐ προσεγγίζοντες, εἰ μή τι ἄν πρὸς τὸ δελεάσαι ψυχὰς ἀστηρίκτους τῇ αὐτῶν κακοδιδασκαλίᾳ. εἰς οὐδὲν γὰρ ἡμῖν ὁμοιοῦνται ἤ μόνον ὀνόματι καλεῖσθαι σεμνύνονται, ὅπως διὰ τοῦ ὀνόματος τὸ ἐπίπλαστον τῆς ἑαυτῶν κακίας θηράσωνται. «τὸ δὲ κρίμα τούτων» κατὰ τὸ γεγραμμένον «ἔνδικόν ἐστιν», ὡς ὁ ἅγιος ἀπόστολος Παῦλος ἔφη· 2. διὰ γὰρ τὰς κακὰς αὐτῶν πράξεις τὸ ἀνταπόδομα ἀποδοθήσεται αὐτοῖς.
But they (maintain) a life of luxury and an impious doctrine. <…> They misuse the name as a veil for their vice. “Their judgment is just” (Rom 3:8), and they will receive retribution from God worthy of their deeds.	These people spend their lives in dissolution and everything they do is for the comfort of their bodies. They don’t come near us at all except to entrap unstable souls by their wicked doctrine. They are not at all like us apart from their ostentatious use of the name, so that through the name they can hunt the cover of their own vice. “Their judgment,” according to what is written, “is just,” as Paul the saint and apostle said (Rom 3:8). On account of their evil deeds, retribution will be given to them.

Commentary

The Refutator omitted this passage, probably due to his summarizing technique. The first two clauses (Sed vitam quidem luxoriosam, sententiam autem impiam) lack a verb. We can supply habent, habentes, or the like. Epiphanius rewrote the passage with his typical pleonasm. The claim that Carpocratians wishing to “entrap” unstable souls seems to be his own invention. It seems fair to intuit, however, that Marcellina (see Commentary on 1.25.6 below) must have been a skillful recruitor in Rome.

The “name” here is probably not the name of Jesus,⁶⁸ but of “Christian.” Carpocratians called themselves Christians, as Epiphanius said earlier (Pan. 27.3.3), a name that was thought to include that of Christ. Irenaeus’s expression regarding the veil recalls 1 Peter 2:16: “not using freedom as a veil for vice (μὴ ὡς ἐπικάλυμμα ἔχοντες τῆς κακίας τὴν ἐλευθερίαν).” Indeed, Irenaeus’s passage as a whole is largely a pastiche of scriptural language and stereotyped accusation. No example of the Carpocratian life of “luxury” is mentioned. If the Carpocratians taught that Jesus was just, pure, and ruler of his passions—as Irenaeus wrote—and if Carpocratians aimed to imitate this Jesus, it is hard to see their rationale for dissolute living.

Attacks on Carpocratian morality

Text and translation

Irenaeus, AH 1.25.4	Eusebius, HE 4.7.9	Epiphanius, Pan. 27.4.3
Et in tantum insania ineffrenati sunt, uti et omnia quaecumque sunt irreligiosa et impia in potestate habere et operari se dicant.	τούτοις τε ἀκολούθως πάντα δρᾶν χρῆναι διδάσκειν τὰ αἰσχρουργότατα τοὺς μέλλοντας εἰς τὸ τέλειον τῆς κατὰ αὐτοὺς μυστ-αγωγίας ἤ καὶ μᾶλλον μυσαροποιίας ἐλεύσεσθαι, ὡς μὴ ἄν ἄλλως ἐκφευξομένους τοῦς κοσμικούς, ὡς ἄν ἐκεῖνοι φαῖεν, ἄρχοντας, μὴ οὐχὶ πᾶσιν τὰ δι’ ἀρρητοποιίας ἀπονείμαντας χρέα.	ἀδεῶς γὰρ τὸν νοῦν αὐτῶν εἰς οἶστρον ἐκδεδωκότες πάθεσιν ἡδονῶν μυρίων ἑαυτοὺς παραδεδώκασι.
Let loose to such a pitch of madness, they even say that they hold in their power everything irreligious and impious—and perform (these things) themselves.	In accordance with these things (namely, “magical” practice), he (Carpocrates) taught that it was necessary for those going to come to the initiation of their mystery—or muck job—to do and use all things most shameful, as there is no other way for them to escape the cosmic rulers, as they call them, without paying back the debts to all (the rulers) through their secret deeds.	For without fear they have given their minds to frenzy, and have delivered themselves to passions of myriads of pleasures.

Commentary

The Refutator omitted this passage, perhaps because he judged it redundant or exaggerated. Irenaeus’s final clause—“everything irreligious and impious they … perform” is not omitted by Epiphanius, as it might initially seem, but expanded by concrete charges below (Pan. 27.4.6). By means of his broad and all-inclusive language, Irenaeus gave later heresiologists a wide compass for imaginative expansion: a whole variety of “irreligious” or “impious” activities were regularly attributed to Carpocratian Christians.

Irenaeus spoke as if he cited the Carpocratians (dicant), but what he offered is apparently not a direct quote. He supplied two accusations: that (1) Carpocratians “hold in their power” to do certain actions of which Irenaeus disapproves, and (2) that they actually do them. One might be inclined to admit the first charge without conceding the second. Yet without a direct quote from the Carpocratians themselves, one need admit neither. If, for the sake of argument, one allows both, one should not admit that what was “impious” and “irreligious” for Irenaeus was so for the Carpocratians or their other ancient observers.

One might hypothesize, based on the language of Irenaeus, an alternative interpretation of the first charge. What did it actually mean to the Carpocrations to have wicked deeds “in (their) power” (in potestate habere)? It could be a statement, of course, that one can perform the wicked deed with impunity. It might also imply, however, that one has power not to be affected by such deeds, or that one has power not to perform such deeds. Although this is not what Irenaeus would have his readers believe, it must be recalled that Carpocratians were followers of Jesus, a man known—by Irenaeus’s own report—for his justice, purity, and rule over his passions. The Jesus of the Carpocratians—though he rejected Jewish law—did not perform impious or irreligious acts. Accordingly, it seems unlikely that Carpocratians, who upheld Jesus as their model, did either. The passionlessness of Jesus also makes implausible Epiphanius’s charge that Carpocratians let loose their passions.

The rhetorical trappings of Eusebius, indicating that Carpocratians were or were akin to a secret mystery cult, seem equally fabricated. Eusebius himself reported that Carpocratians performed their “magical” practices in public (with no secrecy) (HE 4.7.9). He was, moreover, apparently mistaken that Carpocratians referred to κοσμικούς ἄρχοντας. According to the Refutator (7.32.1), the term was κοσμοποιούς, represented by Irenaeus’s mundi fabricatores (AH 1.25.1). Eusebius could only appeal in general to “secret” or “unspoken” deeds, none of which he could document.

Text and translation

Irenaeus, AH 1.25.4	Epiphanius, Pan. 27.4.3
Sola enim humana opinione negotia mala et bona dicunt.	φασὶ γὰρ ὅτι ὅσας νομίζεται παρὰ ἀνθρώποις κακὰ εἶναι οὐ κακὰ ὑπάρχει, ἀλλὰ φύσει καλά (οὐδὲν γάρ ἐστι φύσει κακόν), τοῖς δὲ ἀνθρώποις νομίζεται εἶναι φαῦλα.
They say that things are good and evil only in human opinion.	For they say that what is considered among people as vices are not actually vices, but goods by nature. There is nothing vicious by nature, though they are imagined to be bad by human beings.

Commentary

Irenaeus did not write omnia negotia are good and bad by human opinion. He simply wrote negotia. Nevertheless, the clipped nature of his wording inclined later heresiologists to suppose that Carpocratians believed that all moral matters are relative. Irenaeus, in other words, presented the Carpocratians as conventionalists. This portrayal is unlikely if, as Irenaeus also reported, they considered Jesus to be a just and pure man who conquered his passions (AH 1.25.1). Carpocrates’s disciple Epiphanes believed that some things, namely justice and equality, were good by nature (Clement, Strom. 3.2.6.1, with commentary in Chapter 1). There were also evils by nature, namely inequality, injustice, and the passions.⁶⁹ Epiphanes is the best witness that Irenaeus’s report is, if not in error, then at least a misleading simplification.

Epiphanius’s interpretive expansion indicates, not that matters are relative, but that all things—including morally disapproved ones—are by nature good. Yet it is hard to see how a Carpocratian would consider things like the passions, opposed and conquered by Jesus, as goods. The use of φύσει, however, reminds one of the natural law argument used by Epiphanes. Epiphanes had argued that sex and sexual desire were good by nature but condemned and restrained by human laws (Clement, Strom. 3.2.7–9, with commentary in Chapter 1). Epiphanes did not argue that “nothing is vicious by nature” or that natural law made every practice good.

The Carpocratian theory of transmigration

Text and translation

Irenaeus, AH 1.25.4	Ref. 7.32.7	Epiphanius, Pan. 27.4.4–7
Et utique secundum transmigrationes in corpora oportere in omni vita et omni actu fieri animas—si non praeoccupans quis in uno adventum omnia agat semel ac pariter, quae non tantum dicere et audire non est fas nobis.	Εἰς τοσοῦτον δὲ μετενσωματοῦσθαι φάσκουσι τὰς ψυχάς, ὅσον πάντα τὰ ἁμαρτήματα πληρ-ώσωσιν·	4. καὶ ταῦτα πάντα ἐάν τις πράξῃ ἐν τῇ μιᾷ ταύτῃ παρουσίᾳ, οὐκέτι μετενσωματοῦται αὐτοῦ ἡ ψυχὴ εἰς τὸ πάλιν ἀντικαταβληθῆναι, ἀλλὰ ὑπὸ ἕν ποιήσασα πᾶσαν πρᾶξιν ἀπαλλαγήσεται, ἐλευθερωθεῖσα καὶ μηκέτι χρεωστοῦσά τι τῶν πρὸς πρᾶξιν ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ. 5. ποίαν δὲ πρᾶξιν δέδια πάλιν εἰπεῖν, μὴ βορβόρου δίκην κακαλυμμένου ὀχετὸν ἀποκαλύψω καὶ τισι δόξω λοιμώδους δυσοδμίας ἐργάζεσθαι τὴν ἐμφόρησιν. ἀλλ’ ὅμως ἐπειδήπερ ἐξ ἀλθηείας συνεχόμεθα τὰ παρὰ τοῖς ἠπατημένοις ἀποκαλύψαι, σεμνότερον εἰπεῖν τε καὶ τῆς ἀληθείας μὴ ἔξω βαίνειν ἐμαυτὸν καταναγκάσω. 6. τί δὲ ἀλλ’ ὅτι πᾶσαν ἀρρητουργίαν καὶ ἀθέμιτον πρᾶξιν, ἥν οὐ θεμίτὸν ἐπὶ στόματος φέρειν, οὗτοι πράττουσιν καὶ πᾶν εἶδος ἀνδροβασιῶν καὶ λαγνιστέρων ὁμιλιῶν πρὸς γυναῖκας ἐν ἑκάστῳ μέλει σώματος· 7. μαγείας τε καὶ φαρμακείας καὶ εἰδωλολατρείας ἐκ-τελοῦντες τοῦτο εἶναι φασιν ἐργασίαν ἀποδόσεως τῶν ἐν τῷ σώματι ὀφλημάτων εἰς τὸ μηκέτι ἐγκαλεῖσθαι ἤ μέλλειν τι πράξεως ἔργον ἀπαιτεῖσθαι, καὶ τούτου ἕνεκα μὴ ἀποστρέφεσθαι τὴν ψυχὴν μετὰ τὴν ἐντεῦθεν ἀπαλλαγὴν καὶ πάλιν εἰς μετενσωμάτωσιν καὶ μεγαγγισμὸν χωρεῖν.
Assuredly, souls must arrive at every life and in every act by transmigrations into bodies, unless someone takes care in a single advent to do all things once for all and at the same time, things which it is forbidden not only to say but also to hear.	They claim that souls undergo transmigration to fill up the full extent of their sins.	4. And if one accomplishes in this one advent all these things, one’s soul no longer transmigrates, thrown back again into another body, but having done at once every deed, (one) is released, freed, and no longer in debt, as it were, with regard to any practice in the world. 5. What sort of deed I fear to say again, lest I reveal, as it were, a channel of unseen sludge, and seem to some to produce the blast of a pestilential stench. Still, since I am constrained by truth to reveal the matters regarding these dupes, I will force myself to speak in decent enough fashion while not transgressing the truth. 6. What (can I say) but that these people practice every secret deed and sacrilegious practice which it is not lawful to pronounce, even every form of man-mounting and lecherous sex with women, using each part of the body. 7. They perform deeds of magic, drug-making, and idolatry, saying this is discharge of the debts in the body, so that they will no longer be charged, required to do the work of some deed, and for this reason the soul does not return after release from here to again be embodied and transferred.

Commentary

Transmigration (otherwise known as reincarnation or metempsychosis) means that a postmortem self, usually called the soul, survives physical death and is reborn into the bodies of other living creatures. This notion was well-known in the Greco-Roman world and was thought to have come from Egypt (Herodotus, Hist. 2.123). The doctrine had roots in both Orphic and Pythagorean lore. Yet Carpocratians probably adapted and absorbed it, as was typical, through a Platonic filter.⁷⁰

In Plato’s myths, transmigration was a tool of divine providence used to train and purify the soul for heavenly life. Earthly life was a kind of purgatory, and a soul would be reembodied on earth as often as necessary for it to be purified. Plato spoke of the release of the soul from the body at death (Phaedo 64c). This soul, led by an “assigned daimon” (108b), goes on a “journey abroad” (61e, 67b–d). An evil soul has difficulty, “struggling and suffering much until it is led away by force” (107e–8c). In his Gorgias, Plato described how wicked souls travel to the “prison of payback and judgment,” or Tartarus (523b). They are judged by three immortal judges. When condemned, they arrive in “custody,” where they pay “the appropriate sufferings” (τὰ προσήκοντα πάθη) (525a). In other dialogues, Plato depicted disembodied souls as choosing their own bodies and lives according to an allotment (Resp. 617d–21b; cf. Leg. 872e, 903d). Disobedient and recalcitrant souls were said to be reembodied in animals (Tim. 42b–d, 90e–2c), though not all Platonists accepted the idea that (formerly) rational souls could reside in animals.⁷¹

Although Origen thought that transmigration was “an ancestral and not a foreign doctrine” among Jewish esoteric teachings (Comm. Jo. 6.73), there is slim evidence for Jewish authors in antiquity upholding reincarnation. Sami Yli-Karjanmaa has made an erudite case that Philo accepted a doctrine of reincarnation.⁷² David T. Runia acknowledges the reincarnation theme in Philo’s works, but casts doubt on the stance that Philo was seriously committed to the idea.⁷³

We know, however, that a variety of second-century Christians put forward a doctrine of transmigration. Some viewed it negatively as the lower creator’s system of punishment (Irenaeus, AH 1.30.14; Epiphanius, Pan. 26.10.18; cf. Pistis Sophia 2.100; 3.111 [Schmidt-MacDermot 252.5–6; 286.2–3]). Others viewed it positively as part of a system of providence hinted at in scripture. Carpocrates’s contemporary and fellow countryman Basilides, for instance, pointed out that Paul once lived apart from Jewish law (Rom 7:9). Since Paul as a Jew was born under law, there was technically no time for him to have lived apart from Torah. Therefore, Basilides reasoned, Paul must have been referring to a previous life different from the one he lived as a Jew under law.⁷⁴ Later Basilidean Christians cited Deuteronomy 5:9, where the Jewish deity pays back the disobedient to the third and fourth generation.⁷⁵ These Basilideans took “generation” (genea) in the sense of birth, and referred it to multiple births. In short, the Jewish lord punishes disobedient souls by having them live in different bodies for three to four “generations” (that is, lives)—guaranteeing they learn their lesson.⁷⁶

Tertullian indicated that Carpocratians supported transmigration on the basis of another scriptural passage (An. 35.5). There is, however, some ambiguity here. In context, Tertullian referred to “heretics of this sort” (huiusmodi haereticos), and the “heretics” in the vicinity are Carpocratians. The passage in question was John 1:21, where Judean leaders ask John the Baptist, “Are you Elijah?” According to Carpocrates—or perhaps his heirs—these Judeans assumed that the soul of Elijah had returned to the body of John. Such a theory would explain John’s strange behavior, for he wore the same camel hair as Elijah, ate the same food, and was a desert-dweller like the prophet of old. In Matthew, Jesus himself affirmed that “Elijah has come” in the person of John—yet unrecognized; and in another passage Jesus said about John: “He is Elijah”—not a prophet “like” him (Matt 17:12; 11:14–15).⁷⁷

A similar interpretation of John 1:21 is found among the “Doketai” (Ref. 8.10.2). According to the Refutator, the Doketai thought of the words in Job 2:9 (LXX) as mystically spoken by the human soul, “I am a wanderer and a hired handmaid, changing from place to place and from house to house” (i.e., from body to body; cf. T. Job 24:2). The Doketai reportedly believed that souls (ψυχαί) grew cold (ἀποψυγεῖσαι), and fell from higher realities. Now they complete their lives in darkness, “tossed from body to body, kept imprisoned by the creator” (Ref. 8.10.1). The idea of the body as a prison was also attributed to Carpocratians (see later), though there is no strong evidence that they believed in an evil creator (see commentary on AH 1.25.1 earlier).

Theodoret of Cyrus introduced confusion about Carpocratian transmigration when he claimed that, although Carpocratians accept the transmigrations of Pythagoras,

they do not receive the teaching linked to it. For Pythagoras said that souls who had sinned were sent into bodies so as to pay penalties and be purified with (moral) effort (ὥστε καὶ δίκας δοῦναι καὶ καθαρθῆναι σπουδῇ). But these people … say that souls are sent into bodies to complete every form of licentiousness (ὥστε πᾶν εἶδος ἀσελγείας ἐπιτελέσαι).

(Fab. 1.5.2)

If we examine Irenaeus’s language, however, we find that licentiousness is hardly the reason for Carpocratian transmigration. For Carpocratians, souls transmigrate until they experience every life and action (in omni vita et omni actu). This is not the language of completing “sins,” as we see in later summarizing renditions (e.g., Ref.). Given that Carpocratians aimed to imitate the passionless and just Jesus, transmigrating to complete sins is out of place.

We should also mention the evidence in Clement, Stromata 3.3.13.2, which contradicts Theodoret. Clement describes the views of his opponents who accept transmigration: “for they lead down the divine soul into the present cosmos as if into a place of punishment, since it is fitting in their view for these souls to be purified in embodied vessels” (κατάγουσι γὰρ ἐνταῦθα τὴν ψυχὴν θείαν οὖσαν καθάπερ εἰς κολαστήριον τὸν κόμσον, ἀποκαθαίρεσθαι δὲ ταῖς ἐνσωματουμέναις ψυχαῖς προσήκει κατ’ αὐτούς). Clement did not explicitly mention the Carpocratians in this passage, though in this case we reasonably suspect that they were included in Clement’s macro-category of those who credit transmigration.⁷⁸ If so, then Carpocratians also taught transmigration as a system of purification. This (Pythagorean) model makes sense, since Carpocratians endeavored to imitate a pure and just Jesus.

To be sure, later heresiologists found support for linking transmigration and sin in Irenaeus’s subsequent phrase—“things forbidden to say but also hear.” Theodoret (Fab. 1.5.3) quoted Irenaeus’s confession in AH 1.25.5: “If there is practiced among them these godless, unlawful, unspeakable things, I would not believe it.” This supporting “evidence,” however, seems to have been nothing more than Irenaeus’s hostile interpretation. As noted earlier regarding Eusebius, heresiologists spoke of “unspeakable” acts when they had no spoken acts they could document. Granted that Carpocratians followed a just and passionless Jesus, however, they did not perform “unspeakable things,” and they did not need to transmigrate to do so.

Epiphanius imputed extreme sins to Carpocratians, some of which he repeated from Irenaeus (“magic, drug-making, and idolatry” from AH 1.25.3, 6), and some of which he likely inserted from his own mental list of unspeakable acts. Epiphanius claimed that Carpocratians engage in “every form of man-mounting⁷⁹ and lecherous sex with women, using each part of the body”—apparently implying cunnilingus.⁸⁰ Imaginative as he was, Epiphanius was not generating material out of whole cloth. He apparently believed that because Carpocratians were “Gnostics” in the broad sense, he could accuse them of similar sexual “sins” as he had accused his “Gnostics” (more specifically, Stratiotics and Phibionites) in the previous chapter of the Panarion (26.9.6; 26.11.9–11; 26.13.1). Distortion through blending is a common heresiological maneuver.

Text and translation

Irenaeus, AH 1.25.4	Epiphanius, Pan. 27.5.1
sed ne quidem in mentis conceptionem venire, nec credere si apud homines conversantes in his quae sunt secundum nos civitates tale aliquid agitatur.	οὕτως γὰρ ἔχει τὰ αὐτῶν συντάγματα ὡς ἀναγνόντα τὸν συνετὸν θαυμάζειν καὶ ἐκπλήττεσθαι καὶ ἀπιστεῖν εἰ ταῦτα οὕτως ὑπὸ ἀνθρώπων γενήσεται, οὐ μόνον τῶν καθ’ ἡμᾶς πόλιν κατοικούντων, ἀλλὰ καὶ τῶν μετὰ θηρῶν καὶ ὁμοίων θηρσὶ καὶ κτήνεσι καὶ σχεδὸν εἰπεῖν τὰ κυνῶν καὶ ὑῶν πράττειν τολμώντων.
Yet no one would even conceive that something of this kind is done or believe that there are those who live like this among people in our own cities.	So it is that the intelligent reader of their works will be amazed, astounded, and unable to believe whether these things are done by human beings—not only those dwelling in our city—but also those (dwelling) with beasts, with the beasts and cattle of like (people) who dare to practice, or come near to practicing, the (deeds) of dogs and pigs.

Commentary

Michael Williams thought that Irenaeus’s incredulity in this passage was genuine.⁸¹ Irenaeus had evidently never seen Carpocratians engage in any act that he considered sinful. And—despite his remark about “our cities”—he might never have encountered Carpocratians outside of Rome. If so, then Irenaeus’s professed disbelief would then hint that what he had read or heard about Carpocratian practice was, like many rumors, unworthy of belief. Alternatively, we might suspect that Irenaeus partially or wholly feigned incredulity to add credibility to his report. A doubting witness might be thought more critical and thus more credible.

What Irenaeus (or his source) meant by “something of this kind” (tale aliquid) is unclear. Clement’s account may help to fill in the blanks. In Stromata 3.2.10.1, he reported the rumor—repeatedly spoken against all Christians—that Carpocratians

gather for banquets … Μen together with women, after being stuffed full … 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 … After daybreak, they again demand among the women whomever they want.

(cf. Eusebius, HE 4.7.11, cited earlier)

Perhaps Epiphanius, as he expanded Irenaeus, was thinking of this very passage, for he animalized Carpocratians in a way similar to Clement, who wrote that “Carpocrates should have legislated for the lasciviousness of dogs, pigs, and goats” (Strom. 3.2.10.1, with the commentary in Chapter 1).

Epiphanius was capable of giving the impression that he had read Carpocratian writings, though this is almost certainly not the case. He probably adapted a phrase he found later in Irenaeus (“according to their own writings,” AH 1.25.4). Moreover, Epiphanius’s reference to “our city”—interestingly made singular—would also seem to indicate that he believed Carpocratians existed in his own city of Salamis on Cyprus. Somewhat similar is Epiphanius’s remark that Epiphanes, son of Carpocrates, was worshiped καὶ εἰς δεῦρο (Pan. 32.3.6), which could indicate that Epiphanes was worshiped in Cyprus as well. None of this is very likely, however. Epiphanius wished to foster credibility among his readers for his seemingly insider knowledge. Truth be told, he likely had no insider information at all.

Text and translation

Irenaeus, AH 1.25.4	Ref. 7.32.7	Tertullian, On the Soul 35.1		Epiphanius, Pan. 27.5.2
uti, secundum quod scripta eorum dicunt, in omni usu vitae factae animae ipsorum, exeuntes, in nihilo adhuc minus habeant; adoperandum autem in eo, ne forte, propterea quod deest libertati aliqua res, cogantur iterum mitti in corpus.	ὅταν δὲ μηδὲν λείπῃ	nulli enim vitam istam rato fieri, nisi universis quae arguunt eam expunctis, … Itaque metempsychosin necessarie imminere, si non in primo quoque vitae huius commeatu omnibus inlicitis satisfiat (scilicet facinora tributa sunt vitae!) ceterum totiens animam revocari habere quotiens minus quid intulerit, reliquatricem delictorum.		φασὶ γὰρ δεῖν πάντως πᾶσαν χρῆσιν τούτων ποιεῖσθαι, ἵνα μὴ ἐξελθοῦσαι καὶ ὑστερήσασ-αί τινος ἔργου τούτου ἕνεκα καταστραφῶσιν εἰς σώματα πάλιν αἱ ψυχαὶ εἰς τὸ πρᾶξαι αὖθις ἅ μὴ ἔπραξαν.
So that, according to their writings, their souls experience every employment of life, (so that), on departing, these souls lack nothing. They must work for this, lest, because something is lacking to their freedom, they are forced again to be sent into a body.	When nothing remains.	For to no person is this particular life judged valid, unless all things which convicted it are expunged, … Thus transmigration necessarily impinges, if in the first journey of this life the soul does not pay satisfaction with every illegality (crimes, indeed, are life’s taxes!). But the soul is recalled as often as it pays too little, a debtor to transgressions.	For they say that they must in every way make every use of these things, so as not to leave and be lacking some work and for this reason have their souls return to bodies again to practice in turn what they did not practice (before).

Commentary

Mention of Carpocratian writings may indicate that here is where Irenaeus added to his inherited report. What Irenaeus could not bring himself to believe about Carpocratian practice was likely based on what they were rumored to have practiced. What he actually gleaned from their writings (scripta eorum) were apparently statements such as he records: “their souls experience every employment of life” (omni usu vitae). These “employments,” were evidently not considered sinful by the Carpocratians.⁸² They were probably analogous to the “lives” chosen in Plato’s Republic 619b–20d, such as the life of a tyrant, of an athlete, of a craftswoman, and so on (cf. Phaedrus 248d–e).⁸³ To accomplish “every employment of life,” may have meant little more than to attain the widest breadth of experience. This experience would equip the soul with the knowledge that earthly life, in all its manifestations, had nothing to offer.

In Platonic thinking, it took multiple lives to train the soul for life in heaven. Philosophic souls required at least three embodiments, and wayward souls needed dozens—if not hundreds—more (Plato, Phaedrus 256b). If, within the space of a single life, one could learn and reject all forms of bodily life, one could take the “fast track” to heaven, as it were, and avoid reincarnation.

There was a Hermetic saying, perhaps current in Carpocrates’s time: “Having supposed that nothing is impossible to you, consider yourself deathless and able to understand everything: all art, all science, the character of every living thing … times, places, things, qualities, quantities” (CH 11.20). In this line of thought, to experience every employment of life was in part a work of the imagination. One cannot literally perform every job on earth by being active in every time and place, but one can understand different forms of life. It was the job of the intellect to understand all arts. The Hermetic ethical goal was, at any rate, similar to the Carpocratian one: to transcend bodily life altogether by avoiding reincarnation (CH 1.24–6; SH 23.42; 25.3–5; 26.1, 10).

The Irenaean phrase in nihilo adhuc minus habeant evidently translates ὅταν δὲ μηδὲν λείπῃ, or perhaps ὅταν δὲ μηδὲν ἔτι λείπῃ. Tertullian changed the language of life’s “employments” to “crimes” and “transgressions.” We have already noticed such polemical modifications above (e.g., Ref. 7.32.7; Epiphanius, Pan. 27.4.6). In changing the terminology, Tertullian showed little interest in representing what may well have been Carpocratian language, and even less interest in what Carpocratians meant by it. Epiphanius, by contrast, seems to have, in this instance, stuck closer to his sources by referring to the souls lacking (ὑστερήσα-σαί) a deed (τινος ἔργου) and being forced to return to practice what they failed to do. At the same time, an “employment of life” is evidently different than an individual deed.

Text and translation

Irenaeus, AH 1.25.4	Epiphanius, Pan. 27.5.3
Propter hoc dicunt Iesum hanc dixisse parabola: cum es cum adversario tuo in via, da operam ut libereris ab eo, ne forte te det iudici et iudex ministro et mittat te in carcerem. Amen dico tibi, non exies inde, donec reddas novissmum quadrantem.	καὶ τοῦτό ἐστι φασίν, ὅπερ ὁ Ἰησοῦς ἐν τῷ εὐαγγελίῳ εἶπειν διὰ της παραβολῆς ὅτι «ἴσθι εὐνοῶν τῷ ἀντιδίκῳ σου ἐν ᾧ εἶ ἐν τῇ ὁδῷ μετ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ δὸς ἐργασίαν ἀπηλλάχθαι ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ, μή πως ὁ ἀντίδικος παραδῷ σε τῷ κριτῇ καὶ ὁ κριτὴς τῷ ὑπηρέτῃ, καὶ ὁ ὑπηρέτης βάλῃ σε εἰς φυλακήν· ἀμὴν λέγω σοί, οὐ μὴ ἐξἐλθῃς ἐκεῖθεν, ἕως ἄν ἀποδῷς τὸν ἔσχατον κοδράντην.»
For this reason they say that Jesus told this parable: “When you are with your adversary on the way, take care that you be freed from him, lest he give you to the judge, and the judge to the minister who will send you to prison. Truly I say to you, you will not leave there, until you’ve paid the last penny.”	This is, they say, what Jesus (said) in the gospel via his parable, “Take care with your adversary with whom you are on the way and provide the means to be released from him, lest the adversary deliver you to the judge and the judge to the minister, and the minister throw you in prison. Truly I say to you, you won’t leave there until you have paid the last penny.”

Commentary

Perhaps the Carpocratian language of performing a “deed” comes from this very passage, for Jesus literally commanded his followers to “produce a work” (δὸς ἐργασίαν/da operam). Here the sense of debt comes into play, whereas before this point, Irenaeus had not used the metaphor of financial obligation. We do not know how much the Carpocratians highlighted the language of debt apart from this “parable.” We also do not know what precisely was owed by the soul. Plato spoke of the body’s borrowed elements (earth, air, fire, and water) that were repaid again at death (Tim. 42e–3a; cf. Alcinous, Didasc. 16.1; Philo, Post. 5).⁸⁴ We cannot grant, in adherence with heresiological tradition, that Carpocratians viewed sin as their debt.

Jesus’s saying is represented—whether by Irenaeus or the Carpocratians we do not know—as a “parable” apparently because the story was taken to have a deeper meaning. Tertullian, for his part, called it an allegory (allegorian, An. 35.2). The citation of the “parable/allegory” was not necessarily from a “gospel” as Epiphanius thought. Still, the quote combines elements from documents now recognizable as Matthew 5:25–6 and Luke 12:58–9, as can be seen in the following chart:

Cited text	Apparent base text	Alternative reading
cum es cum adversario tuo in via	ὡς [γὰρ ὑπάγεις] μετὰ τοῦ ἀντιδίκου σου [ἐπ’ ἄρχοντα] ἐν τῇ ὁδῷ (Luke 12:58)	ἴσθι εὐνοῶν τῷ ἀντιδίκῳ σου ταχύ, ἕως ὅτου εἶ μετ ̓ αὐτοῦ ἐν τῇ ὁδῷ (Matt 5:25)
da operam ut libereris ab eo	δὸς ἐργασίαν ἀπηλλάχθαι ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ (Luke 12:58)	No corresponding material
ne forte te det iudici et iudex ministro	μήποτέ σε παραδῷ [ὁ ἀντίδικος] τῷ κριτῇ καὶ ὁ κριτὴς τῷ ὑπηρέτῃ (Matt 5:25)	μήποτε κατασύρῃ σε πρὸς τὸν κριτήν, καὶ ὁ κριτής σε παραδώσει τῷ πράκτορι (Luke 12:58)
et mittat te in carcerem	καὶ [ὁ πράκτωρ] σε βαλεῖ εἰς φυλακήν (Luke 12:58)	καὶ εἰς φυλακὴν βληθήσῃ (Matt 5:25)
Amen dico tibi, non exies inde, donec reddas novissmum quadrantem.	ἀμὴν λέγω σοι, οὐ μὴ ἐξέλθῃς ἐκεῖθεν, ἕως ἄν ἀποδῷς τὸν ἔσχατον κοδράντην. (Matt 5:26)	λέγω σοι, οὐ μὴ ἐξέλθῃς ἐκεῖθεν, ἕως καὶ τὸ ἔσχατον λεπτὸν ἀποδῷς. (Luke 12:59)

Did the Carpocratian Christians have a mixed text of Matthew and Luke, which might suggest some kind of gospel harmony?⁸⁵ Or did they simply have a different text of the “parable” so that it now only seems as if they combined two canonical texts? Perhaps they worked with an oral version of the saying, or a written exegetical tradition in a commentary or testimonial source.⁸⁶ Strictly speaking, the Carpocratian text—with its omission of words like ἄρχοντα, ἀντίδικος, and πράκτωρ—is not identical to any known gospel text.

If we compare Marcion’s Evangelion, whose wording is preserved in Epiphanius’s report on Marcion (Pan. 42, Scholion 37) and Tertullian (Against Marcion 4.29.16), we find that it also used the term κοδράντην (thus this word cannot be distinctly Matthean). The Evangelion also used the Lukan terms κατασύρῃ and πράκτωρ, which are not in the Carpocratian text.⁸⁷

In the end, we do not know what text Carpocratians were using in the mid-second century, or even whether Irenaeus accurately reported their text. Heresiologists said nothing about a Carpocratian gospel; nor did they say it was corrupt.⁸⁸ Epiphanius, for his part, added initial elements (ἴσθι εὐνοῶν τῷ ἀντιδίκῳ σου ἐν ᾧ εἶ … μετ ̓ αὐτοῦ) which conformed the text more to Matthew, perhaps because he believed—probably wrongly—that “Carpocrates” used the gospel of Matthew to prove that Jesus was the son of Joseph (Pan. 30.14.2).⁸⁹

Roughly contemporary writers frequently used the imagery of this Carpocratian “parable.” Saying 39 in the Sentences of Sextus (mid- to late second century CE) informs us that “an evil daimon rectifies the one who has lived viciously after the release from the body until he pays the last penny” (κακῶς ζῶντα μετὰ τὴν ἀπαλλαγὴν τοῦ σώματος εὐθύνει κακὸς δαίμων μέχρις οὗ καὶ τὸν ἔσχατον κοδράντην ἀπολάβῃ).⁹⁰ Here paying the last penny seems to be little more than a metaphor of paying for one’s sins (cf. Didache 1.5). The author of the Testimony of Truth used the “parable” in reference to paying the ruler of this world (NHC IX,3 30.15–17), not a separate “adversary.” For this author, paying the last penny means paying the full price to the creator who demands the work of pleasure (sex and procreation).⁹¹

The third or fourth century Pistis Sophia (3.113) offers a detailed interpretation of the “parable” that seems more like the Carpocratian understanding.⁹² According to the interpretation of Mary (a figure important for Carpocratians, so Origen, Cels. 5.62), souls which come forth from bodies proceed with an “opposing spirit.” The soul, unable to find the “mystery” of releasing itself from the opposing spirit, is taken to the Virgin of Light (the judge), who delivers the soul to one of her associates, who in turn casts the soul back into the body until it “has done the last cycle allotted to it.” The latter phrase is a reference to transmigration. Possibly what we have here is a reception of the Carpocratian interpretation of the “parable,” modified to suit a different metaphysics. Irenaeus will explain the Carpocratians’ allegorical reading of the “parable” below.

Text and translation

Irenaeus, AH 1.25.4	Epiphanius, Pan. 27.5.4–6
Et adversarium dicunt unum ex angelis qui sunt in mundo, quem diabolum vocant, dicentes factum eum ad id ut ducat eas quae perierunt animas a mundo ad principem. Et hunc dicunt esse primum ex mundi fabricatoribus, et illum altero angelo, ei qui ministrat ei, tradere tales animas, uti in alia corpora includat: corpus enim dicunt esse carcerem.	4. μῦθον δέ τινα πλάττουσιν οἱ αὐτοὶ πρὸς ἐπίλυσιν τῆς παραβολῆς ταύτης καί φασιν εἶναι τὸν ἀντίδικον ἐκεῖνον τῶν τὸν κόσμον πεποιηκότων ἀγγέλων ἕνα καὶ εἰς αὐτὸ τοῦτο κατεσκευάσθαι, εἰς τὸ ἀπάγειν τὰς ψυχὰς πρὸς τὸν κριτὴν τὰς ἐντεῦθεν ἐξερχομένας ἐκ τῶν σωμάτων ἐκεῖσε δὲ ἐλεγχόμένας· μὴ ποιησάσας δὲ πᾶσαν ἐργασίαν παραδίδοσθαι ἀπὸ τοῦ ἄρχοντος τῷ ὑπηρέτῃ. 5. ἄγγελον δὲ εἶναι τὸν ὑπηρέτην, ἐξυπηρετούμενον τῷ κρίτῇ τῷ κοσμοποιῷ εἰς τὸ φέρειν τὰς ψυχὰς πάλιν καὶ εἰς σώματα καταγ-γίζειν διάφορα. εἶναι δὲ τὸν ἀντίδικον τοῦτον, ὅν ἔφημεν τὸν κύριον εἰρηκέναι ἐν τῷ εὐαγγελίῳ, [ὅν] οὗτοι ἄγγελον ἕνα τῶν κοσμοποιῶν φασιν, ὄνομα ἔχοντα διάβολον. 6. φασὶ γὰρ εἶναι τὴν φυλακὴν τὸ σῶμα.
This adversary, they say, is one of the angels in the world, whom they call devil, saying that he was made to lead those souls that perish from the world to the ruler. This one, they say, is the chief from the world-makers, and he hands on to another angel who serves him, to transfer such souls and shut them into other bodies, for the body they call a prison.	These people concoct a fable to explain this parable and say that the adversary is one of the angels who made the world and he is prepared for this (task), to lead away the souls to the judge, (namely) souls leaving this world and their bodies to be judged there. Souls which have not done every work are delivered from the ruler to the minister. 6. The minister is an angel serving the world-making judge to bring souls again into bodies, bottling them up. This adversary, whom we said the Lord referred to in the gospel, these people say is one of the world-making angels whose name is devil. 6. For they say that the body is the prison.

Commentary

For Carpocratians, the adversary is not an “opposing spirit,” as in Pistis Sophia, but the opponent, the devil. By this time (the mid-second century), it was common to view the devil as a wicked angel.⁹³ Yet the Carpocratian devil is not, it seems, fallen. He is, rather, made for the presumably good purpose of transporting souls to the “ruler,” here designated as the chief of the world-makers. Epiphanius inferred—too hastily, it seems—that this being can be called the Carpocratian creator. In Sethian lore, this demiurgical figure is called Yaldabaoth, but for Carpocrations he is unnamed. He seems to be just, not evil, as in Valentinian and later Marcionite interpretations of the creator. One should keep in mind, however, that the teaching of Epiphanes (Strom. 3.2.6–8, with commentary in Chapter 1), does not distinguish a lower from a higher creator. There is one God who is also the creator, who is never called an angel. If the Carpocratians did speak of a chief of the world-making angels, this angel is—quite significantly—only mentioned in the context of interpreting Jesus’s “parable.” The “parable” and its interpretation may represent material that Irenaeus added to a pre-existing Carpocratian report.

The body as a prison was a widespread notion. Plato cited it as an Orphic idea (Cratylus 400c; cf. Phaedo 62b; Gorgias 493a). It was an oft-recycled idea that appears also among Jews and Christians (e.g., Philo, Deus 150; Clement, Strom. 3.3.16.3; Origen, Princ. 1.8.4).⁹⁴ Gananath Obeyesekere observes that, for certain believers in transmigration, the “body” might have been understood not as the present physical body, but as “the body’s incarceration … in the total rebirth cycle.”⁹⁵ We cannot infer a hatred of the body among Carpocratians any more than we can for any other (Orphic, Platonic, Pythagorean, and Christian) users of the “body as prison” phrase.

The Carpocratian interpretation of the “parable” has analogies in other Christian writers. According to a Valentinian cited by Clement, the adversary is the earthly body from which one must be freed (Exc. 52.1). Clement disagreed, claiming—in this respect like the Carpocratians—that the adversary is the devil, and the “minister” is the devil’s agent (Strom. 4.14.95.2–3). Elsewhere, however, Clement imagined the adversary as the passions (Quis div. 40.5–6).⁹⁶ Origen interpreted the “adversary” as the devil who delivered the sinful soul to an angelic lord, with the judge as Jesus (Hom. Luke 35.9–15). Tertullian insisted that the adversary was simply a non-Christian (ethnicus homo). Christians should treat their non-Christian neighbors fairly in commercial transactions lest they literally end up in debtor’s prison (An. 35.2; similarly Didache 1.5). At the same time, Tertullian granted a deeper meaning in which the adversary was the devil, the judge was God, the minister “an angel of execution,” and the prison the underworld (35.3; cf. An. 58; Orat. 7.3).⁹⁷ Ironically, this latter interpretation was probably not far different from Carpocratian teaching—with the obvious exception that the body, not the underworld, is the prison.⁹⁸ For Carpocratians, in all likelihood, the earth itself was a kind of Hades; there was thus no need for a literal underworld or underworld punishments.

Text and translation

Irenaeus, AH 1.24.4	Tertullian, On the Soul 35.1	Ref. 7.32.7	Epiphanius, Pan. 27.5.6
Et id quod ait: non exies inde, quoadusque novissimum quadrantem reddas, interpretantur quasi non exeat quis a potestate angelorum eorum qui mundum fabricaverunt, sed sit transcorporatus semper, quoadusque in omni omnino operatione quae in mundo est fiat; et cum nihil defuerit ei, tum liberatam eius animam, eliberari ad illum deum qui est supra angelos mundi fabricatores; sic quoque salvari et omnes animas.	donec exsolvat novissimum quadrantem detrusa identidem in carcerem corporis.	τότε ἐλευθερωθεῖσαν ἀπαλλαγῆναι πρὸς ἐκεῖνον τὸν ὑπεράνω τῶ(ν) (κο)σμοποιῶν ἀγγέλων θεόν. καὶ οὕτως σωθήσεσθαι πάσας τὰς ψυχάς·	τὸν δὲ ἔσχατον κοδράντην θέλουσιν εἶναι τὴν μετενσωμάτωσιν· καθ’ ἑκάστην παρουσίαν σωμάτων ἐπιτελεῖν ἐσχάτην πρᾶξιν καὶ μηκέτι ὑπολείπεσθαι πρὸς τὸ ἀθέμιτόν τι πρᾶξαι. δεῖ γὰρ, φασὶν ὡς προείπαμεν, πάντα <δι>ελθοῦσαν καὶ πράξασαν καθ’ ἕκαστον καὶ ἐλευθερωθεῖσαν ἀνελθεῖν πρὸς τὸν ἄνω ἄγνωστον, ὑπερβᾶσαν τοὺς κοσμοποιοὺς καὶ τὸν κοσμοποιόν.
And what he said: “you will not leave there, until you have paid the last penny,” they interpret to mean that no one will leave the power of their world-making angels, but will always be transferred into bodies until (it does) absolutely every action done in the world. When it (the soul) lacks nothing, then the soul of this one is free, freed for that God who is above the world-making angels. In this way all souls are saved.	until it pays the last penny, (the soul) is repeatedly pushed back into the prison of the body.	Then the soul is freed to depart to the God who is above the world-making angels. In this way, all souls will be saved.	They want “the last penny” to refer to transmigration. At each advent of bodies, they accomplish the final deed and no longer come up short in their work of sacrilege. For it is necessary, they say, as we said before, for the soul to pass through all things and perform each (deed), and, when freed, to rise to the Unknown above, transcending the world-makers and the world maker.

Commentary

The power of the world-making angels is exerted through the human body. Only by escaping the human body can one escape the angels who made the world. It is never said that these angels, in the Carpocratian system, are outright evil or that their ruler is God. Even the system in which the soul is (re)placed in bodies cannot be called evil. It seems, rather, that the cycle of transmigration was designed by the ultimate God—here called “that God who is above the world-making angels” (Irenaeus)—to purify souls (cf. Clement, Strom. 3.3.13.2–3). In the end, all souls will be purified, for all souls will be saved.

Michael Bland Simmons distinguishes four senses of salvation in Mediterranean antiquity:

1. Salvation from the world or from threats in the world

2. Salvation for the world (blessings for an individual and communities)

3. Salvation in the world (a state of well-being, prosperity, and success)

4. Salvation beyond the world (continuation of life beyond death in a blessed abode)⁹⁹

Carpocratian salvation seems to refer primarily to salvation beyond the world-making angels, though we should not exclude salvation in the other senses. Salvation and the final end of humanity are to transcend this (lower) world, which (again) does not necessarily imply a hatred of matter.

Carpocratians believed in universal salvation. In this teaching, they were not far off from the understanding we find in the Apocryphon of John (NHC II,2). This paradigmatic Sethian text also supports a theory of transmigration. Here, the authorities cast forgetful and wicked souls “into prison,” namely the earthly body. Souls consort with bodies until they awaken from forgetfulness and receive knowledge. In this way, souls are perfected and saved (27.6–12). All souls receive a fitting salvation with the sole exception of those souls who understood the truth and turned away (27.21–30).

Here again, Irenaeus used the language, not of sin, but of operatio. Operatio is apparently a translation of πράξις, as one gathers from Epiphanius. One must accomplish every action that is in the world. If we grant that Carpocratians taught this doctrine, then presumably for them, “every action” meant every just action, as exemplified by a pure and righteous Jesus. Epiphanius’s “work of sacrilege” is his own addition. Similarly, whereas Irenaeus had written, “when the soul lacks nothing” (et cum nihil defuerit ei; cf. Ref. 7.32.7), Epiphanius polemically subjoined: “for doing some work of sacrilege” (πρὸς τὸ ἀθέμιτόν τι πρᾶξαι). Such comments are polemical additions that cannot be used as data.

Text and translation

Irenaeus, AH 1.25.4	Tertullian, On the Soul 35.4	Ref. 7.32.8	Epiphanius, Pan. 27.5.7
sive ipsae praeoccupantes in uno adventum in omnibus misceantur operationibus, sive de corpore in corpus transmigrantes vel immissae, in unaquaque specie vitae adimplentes et reddentes debita, liberari, uti iam non fiant in corpore.	si omnium facinorum debitrix anima est	εἰ τινὲς μὲν φθάσασαι ἐν μιᾷ παρουσίᾳ ἀναμιγῆναι πάσαις ἁμαρτίαις οὐκέτι μετενσωματοῦνται, ἀλλὰ πάντα ὁμοῦ ἀποδοῦσαι τὰ ὀφλήματα, ἐλευθερωθήσονται τοῦ μηκέτι γενέσθαι ἐν σώματι.	φασὶ δὲ πάλιν ὅτι δεῖ κἄν τε ἐν μιᾷ παρουσίᾳ τῆς μετενσωματώσεως πράξασας λοιπὸν ἄνω ἐλευθερθείσας ἀπιέναι· εἰ δὲ μὴ ἐν μιᾷ παρουσίᾳ πράξωσι, καθ’ ἑκάστην παρουσίαν μετενσωματώσεως κατὰ βραχὺ ποιησάσας ἑκάστου ἔργου ἀθεμίτου τὴν ἐργασίαν λοιπὸν ἐλευθερωθῆναι.
—whether those who take care to share in all actions in a single advent, or those who pass from body to body or are sent into (bodies), fulfilling (their duty) in each type of life and paying their debts—(and so) are freed so as no longer to come into a body.	If the soul is a debtor to all crimes	If some plunge into every sin in a single incarnation, they are no longer reincarnated. By paying their dues at once, they will be liberated from future embodiment.	They say again that it is necessary, even if in a single advent of transmigration, for souls to accomplish what remains and, when freed, to ascend above. If they do not accomplish in a single advent, they do the work of each sacrilegious deed down to the minutiae in each advent of transmigration and are, in the end, freed.

Commentary

There seem to be two options presented here: (1) salvation after a single incarnation, and (2) salvation by practicing every type of life over the course of multiple incarnations. The phrase beginning in unaquaque (“in each type of life”) applies to both options, not just to the last.¹⁰⁰ Once again, Irenaeus did not say that souls owed the performance of criminal deeds.

Irenaeus’s heirs, however, felt at liberty to change the language. The Refutator changed “all actions” to “all sins” (cf. Ref. 7.32.7). Moreover, Epiphanius wrote, “each sacrilegious deed” (ἑκάστου ἔργου ἀθεμίτου). This phrase is not a fair representation of Irenaeus’s “each form of life” (unaquaque specie vitae), which was originally perhaps ἐν ἑκαστῷ τρόπῳ ζῶης or, as Rousseau thought, ἐν ἑκάστῳ εἴδει τοῦ βίου [SC 264:340]). One can see how Tertullian’s use of debitrix emerges from Irenaeus’s debita, but Tertullian’s addition of omnium facinorum is inaccurate. All three interpreters of Irenaeus aimed to vilify Carpocratians through pejorative renditions. Irenaeus provided the springboard for later interpretations (by referring to “godless,” “unlawful,” and “unspeakable” acts, AH 1.25.5), but his heirs took the additional step of altering the language elsewhere to serve their polemical ends.

Text and translation

Irenaeus, AH 1.25.5	Epiphanius, Pan. 27.5.8
Καὶ εἰ μὲν πράσσεται παρ’ αὐτοῖς τὰ ἄθεα καὶ ἔκθεσμα καὶ ἀπειρημένα, ἐγὼ οὐκ ἄν πιστεύσ-αιμι. Ἐν δὲ τοῖς συγγράμμασιν αὐτῶν οὕτως ἀναγέγραπται, καὶ αὐτοὶ οὕτως ἐξηγοῦνται τὸν Ἰησοὺν λέγοντες ἐν μυστηρίῳ τοῖς μαθηταῖς αὐτοῦ καὶ ἀποστόλοις κατ’ ἰδίαν λελαληκέναι, καὶ αὐτοὺς ἀξιῶσαι τοῖς ἀξίοις καὶ τοῖς πειθομένοις κατ’ ἰδίαν ταῦτα παραδιδόναι.	λέγουσι δὲ πάλιν ὅτι τοῖς ἀξίοις ταῦτα καταξιοῦμεν διηγεῖσθαι.
If they practice these godless, unlawful, unspeakable things, I for my part would not believe it. Yet in their writings it is so written. They themselves explain that Jesus spoke in a mystery to his disciples and apostles in private, and demanded that they pass on in private these teachings to the worthy and believing.	They say in turn that “we deign to speak these things to those who are worthy.”

Commentary

Here I print the Greek fragment of Irenaeus from Theodoret, Fab. 1.5.3.¹⁰¹ For a second time, Irenaeus inserted a parenthetical intervention (cf. above AH 1.25.4), in which he at least posed as incredulous. Epiphanius, ready to believe any Carpocratian misdeed, omitted the expression of doubt.

What makes Irenaeus’s report seem reliable, perhaps, is the mention of Carpocratian writings, which he mentioned before (scripta eorum, AH 1.25.4). Whether Irenaeus actually had Carpocratian writings, however, is at least questionable.¹⁰² He never quoted them directly with the possible exception of the “parable” of the last penny (AH 1.25.4). It could be that Irenaeus was simply following the language of his source, an updated edition of Justin’s Syntagma.¹⁰³ The expression of doubt, however, seems to have been added by Irenaeus himself.¹⁰⁴

Here at least, Epiphanius omitted speaking of Carpocratian writings. Heavily curtailing Irenaeus’s report, Epiphanius made it seem as if Carpocratians themselves, independently of Jesus, claimed to speak to the worthy. Epiphanius’s phrase, introduced by ὅτι, that “we deign to speak these things to those who are worthy,” is presented as a quote from a Carpocratian writing. Yet comparison with Irenaeus shows that Epiphanius did not have any Carpocratian text, but only Irenaeus’s report. Epiphanius again tried to give the impression of having insider sources when in fact he had none.

According to Irenaeus, the Carpocratian Jesus spoke things to his disciples and bid them pass on his instruction in private to those worthy and believing. Such instructions are a topos in esoteric Christian literature (see, e.g., Second Book of Jeu 43.1, Justin’s Book of Baruch in Ref. 5.23-24). What the Carpocratian Jesus actually spoke, however, is left undefined, and we certainly cannot infer that it included “sins” or “sacrilegious” deeds.

A better hypothesis, and one based on the context, is that the Carpocratian Jesus here being referred to is the same Jesus who provided an allegorical explanation of the last penny “parable.” If so, we might imagine that the underlying Carpocratian text presented a narrative situation similar to what we find in Mark 4:1–20: Jesus offers parables in the open, then private, allegorizing readings of these parables when alone with his disciples (cf. Mark 7:17–18; 9:28–30; 10:10–11; 13:3–4).

A possible connection to Mark is evident also in the phrase “in a mystery” (ἐν μυστηρίῳ), which may allude to the singular “mystery” of God’s kingdom (Mark 4:11).¹⁰⁵ But the singular use of μυστήριον is no sure sign that Carpocratians knew or used the gospel of Mark. It was common knowledge in the second century that Jesus, not to mention Paul, imparted information as “mystery” (Ap. John [BG] 76.16; cf. 1 Cor 2:7; Gos. Thom. 1.1; Gos. Jud. 1; Pistis Sophia 3.111 [Schmidt-MacDermot 281.16]).¹⁰⁶ To depict Jesus as speaking “in a mystery” to his disciples, the Carpocratians need not have referred to any specific text.

All we can safely say is that there was a Carpocratian tradition in which Jesus explained the (non-Markan) allegory of the last penny “parable” in support of a doctrine of transmigration. Transmigration was thus represented as a private teaching of Jesus, explained only to those who were worthy and believing. This would explain why other Christians did not know and/or accept this teaching. Jesus as a teacher of reincarnation is, to some extent, put in the mold of Pythagoras, who was said to have had two sets of disciples—“hearers” (“exoterics”) who knew his public lectures, and insiders (“esoterics”) who knew his private instructions (Iamblichus, Pythagorean Way of Life 30, 72–3). Transmigration was of course widely known in Carpocrates’s time (Vergil, Aen. 6.713–51; Ovid, Met. 15.59–476), but it was represented as an esoteric Jewish teaching by Origen (Comm. Jo. 6.73). It may or may not have been an esoteric teaching of the Carpocratians.¹⁰⁷

A recapitulation of Carpocratian ethics

Text and translation

Irenaeus, AH 1.25.5	Tertullian, On the Soul 35.1	Epiphanius, Pan. 27.5.8
Διὰ πίστεως γὰρ καὶ ἀγάπης σώζεσθαι, τὰ δὲ λοιπὰ ἀδιάφορα ὄντα κατὰ τὴν δόξαν τῶν ἀνθρώπων πῆ μὲν ἀγαθά, πὴ δὲ κακὰ ὀνομάζεσθαι, οὐδενὸς φύσει κακοῦ ὑπάρχοντος. 108	quia non natura quid malum habeatur, sed opinione.	ἵνα πράξωσι τὰ δοκοῦντα εἶναι κακά, οὐκ ὄντα δὲ φύσει κακά, ἵνα μαθόντες ἐλευθερωθῶσι.
For salvation is through faith and love; the remaining matters are indifferent. According to human opinion, some things are called good and others evil, though nothing is evil by nature.	since nothing is held to be evil by nature, but by opinion.	so that they accomplish what is thought evil, though it is not evil by nature, so that by learning (this lesson) they can be free.

Commentary

Irenaeus’s overall framework and reception of Carpocratian teaching were pejorative. In itself, however, there seems to be nothing negative about the doctrine that people are saved by faith and love. If we accept this teaching as genuine, it would serve to correct the charges, emphasized by the Refutator and Epiphanius, that for Carpocratians one must commit every sin to be saved. The sinful deeds which heresiologists had in mind had nothing to do with faith and love, nor with the righteous and pure example of the passionless Jesus whom Carpocratians aimed to imitate.

This Carpocratian understanding of salvation through faith and love approximates the teaching in Ephesians 2:8, where we learn that Christians are saved “by grace through faith” (τῇ γὰρ χάριτί ἐστε σεσῳσμένοι διὰ πίστεως). What salvific “faith” means has been debated by theologians for centuries.¹⁰⁹ Here it apparently refers to the believer’s faith, or trust in God, as opposed to the trust Jesus demonstrated in his life and then finally on the cross.

Love (ἀγάπη) is perhaps the central Christian virtue (1 Cor 13; 1 John 4:7) which works itself out in all manner of gift-giving, hospitality, and self-sacrifice.¹¹⁰ This is an instance in which testimony from the heresiologists provides a way to check their distortions. Heresiologists accused Carpocratians of performing only evil practices; but evil practices do not accord with the ideals of Carpocratian soteriology and ethics.

With regard to Carpocratian ethical theory, Irenaeus repeated and expanded a point he made in AH 1.25.4, that for Carpocratians things are only called evil and good in human opinion. Nonetheless, this is the first time that Irenaeus introduced the term “indifferent” (ἀδιάφορα). This particular term was used especially by Stoic philosophers, who classified all things as good, bad, and indifferent (DL, Vita Phil. 7.101–2).¹¹¹ Something indifferent could also be described as something intermediate between virtue and vice. A common example was wealth. Having wealth, according to Stoics, contributes neither to happiness nor to unhappiness. At the same time, the typical Stoic interpretation is that having wealth is a “preferred indifferent,” meaning that it is better to have wealth than the converse. Aristo of Chios, a student of Zeno, objected that whether something is preferred would depend on the circumstances—perhaps having wealth makes one subject to a dictator’s wrath, for instance. In this case, having wealth would not be preferred. As a result, it is better to consider things indifferent as purely indifferent.

Generally speaking, Cynics followed Aristo’s line of thought. Even though early Cynics did not typically use the terminology of indifference, by the second century CE, they were often tagged as its supporters. Cynic “indifference” often meant that Cynics transgressed social conventions.¹¹² Many of these conventions had to do with sex and sexuality. The Cynic and (former) Christian Peregrinus, for instance, performed autoerotic acts in public (Lucian, Peregrinus 17). By using the term “indifferent,” Irenaeus wanted to associate Carpocratians with those whom he considered tasteless anti-conventionalists: the Cynics. As he stated later on, “These individuals (the Carpocratians) really emulate … the indifference of the Cynics” (AH 2.32.2). This association with the Cynics would induce people to believe that Carpocratians were unconventional with regard to sexual ethics. This is a line of thought taken up by Clement (Strom. 3.2.10.1).

Clement specifically observed that Aristo made indifference the end goal of human life (Strom. 2.21.129; cf. Justin Martyr, 2 Apol. 3.7; Philodemus, Stoicorum Historia 10.9–10 [Dorandi]). He took this to mean that, for Aristo, all matters in life were indifferent. Yet as Diogenes Laertius clarified, Aristo referred only to matters “between virtue and vice” (Vita Phil. 160; cf. Philo, QG 4.64). Aristo assumed with Zeno that “between what is moral and what is vile there is an immense gulf” (Cicero, Ends 4.70; cf. 4.69; 2.43; 3.50).¹¹³ Thus Clement’s rendition of Aristo is misleading.

We can detect a similar distortion in Irenaeus’s claims. Irenaeus wrote as if Carpocratians were almost complete relativists—besides faith and love, nothing else was truly good except in human opinion. Digging deeper, we see that Irenaeus made two claims about the Carpocratians, both of which stand in tension:

1. Carpocratians were nominalists; besides faith and love, human opinion determines what is good and bad

2. Carpocratians believe that nothing is by nature bad

From the second proposition, favored by Tertullian and Epiphanius, one could conclude that for Carpocratians all things were in fact good by nature. Thus they could perform all conventional evils since they were actually good. Nevertheless, the second proposition’s appeal to nature—nothing is evil by nature—stands in tension with the nominalism of the first proposition—things are evil only in human opinion. Were Carpocratians in fact nominalists or did they appeal to a fixed standard of nature?

The appeal to nature is reminiscent of Epiphanes (Clement, Strom. 3.2.6.3–3.2.7.1, with commentary in Chapter 1). Yet Epiphanes would have denied that nothing is evil by nature. Private property, according to Epiphanes, was evil by nature, because nature shows that people should enjoy all things equally and in common. The data from Epiphanes thus indicates that both of Irenaeus’s claims are misleading: not all Carpocratians, at least, were nominalists, and they did indeed believe that some things were evil by nature—such as human passions and private property.

One suspects that the Carpocratian position was closer to the Stoic one. Yet Cynics and Stoics distinguished virtues like justice and wisdom from indifferent things like health and wealth. For Carpocratians as well, there were things by nature virtuous (like faith and love) and things by nature evil (such as the passions and injustice). In between virtue and vice, Carpocratians may indeed have viewed matters as indifferent, though we do not know if “indifference” was their language.

Problematically, Irenaeus did not mention a specific example of Carpocratian “indifference.” He accused both Valentinians and Nicolaitans of holding certain things permissible (like eating meat once sacrificed to idols), though in these cases, he did not use the term “indifferent” (AH 1.6.3; 1.26.3).¹¹⁴ Later (AH 1.28.2), Irenaeus referred to “indifferent couplings” (indifferentes coitus) which he attributed to both Basilidean and Carpocratian Christians. Irenaeus’s language here, unfortunately, does not clarify matters, as it is probably rooted in rumors such as the widespread legend of “overturning of the lamp” (Clement, Strom. 3.2.10.1, with commentary in Chapter 1).

One wonders how stereotyped “indifference” had become for Irenaeus. He also wrote about Simon of Samaria (AH 1.23.3): “there are no naturally just deeds (nec enim esse naturaliter operationes iustas), except by coincidence (ex accidentia), inasmuch as the world-making angels established (these ‘just’ deeds), and through their precepts led humans into slavery.” Was Irenaeus mixing heretical teachings because he thought that, ultimately, they all taught the same thing (as he states in AH 2.31.1)? I find such a polemical blending likely. We cannot, therefore, assume that Carpocratians themselves used the language of indifference. We certainly cannot accept the position that they performed evil deeds, claiming they were good by nature.

Carpocratian ritual

Text and translation

Irenaeus, AH 1.25.6.	Ref. 7.32.8	Origen, Cels. 5.64	Epiphanius, Pan. 27.5.9
Alii vero ex ipsis signant, cauteriantes suos discipulos in posterioribus partibus exstantiae dexterae auris.	Τούτων τινες καὶ καυτηριάζουσι τοὺς ἰδίους μαθητὰς ἐν τοῖς ὀπίσω μέρεσι τοῦ λοβοῦ τοῦ δεξιοῦ ὠτός.	ἀκοῆς καυστήριά τινας ὀνομάζεσθαι παρὰ Χριστιανοῖς... Σειρῆας δέ τινας ἐξορχουμένας καὶ σοφιστρίας, κατασφραγιζομένας τὰ ὦτα … τοὺς πειθομ-ένους.	σφραγῖδα δὲ ἐν καυτῆρι ἤ δι’ ἐπιτηδεύσεως ξυρίου ἤ ῥαφίδος ἐπιτιθέ-ασιν οὗτοι οἱ ἀπὸ Καρποκρᾶ ἐπὶ τὸν δεξιὸν λοβὸν τοῦ ὠτὸς τοῖς ὑπ’ αὐτῶν ἀπατωμένοις.
Others from them offer a seal, branding their disciples on the back of the right ear lobe.	Some of them brand their own disciples behind the lobe of the right ear.	Some people among Christians are called “brands of hearing,” … Certain Sirens dancing out (their mysteries), experts in their craft, seal the ears of their believers.	These people from Carpocrates apply a seal on their dupes with a branding device or by use of a shaving knife or needle on the right lobe of the ear.

Commentary

Irenaeus underscored two distinctive Carpocratian practices which probably refer to Marcellina’s group in Rome (for Marcellina herself, see the next section). Some Carpocratians—apparently not all—made a brand mark behind the right earlobe of their initiates.¹¹⁵ Epiphanius conflated the practice of branding with tattooing—the “shaving knife” or “needle” appear to be his own inventions.¹¹⁶

The brand mark was evidently called a “seal,” as the language of Celsus (κατασφραγιζομένας) and Epiphanius (σφραγῖδα) indicates. The “seal” was a common Christian term for baptism (Didache 7; Trad. Ap. 22; Didascalia 7.22.2; Acts of Paul and Thecla 3.25). The Carpocratian “seal” perhaps signified that a member of the Carpocratian church was baptized not only with water but with the fire of the Holy Spirit (Matt 3:11; Luke 3:16).¹¹⁷ Evidence for this view comes from Heracleon, a Valentinian Christian active in Rome who connected ear branding to the “baptism of fire” prophesied by John the Baptist:

John (the Baptist) says, “I baptize you with water, yet after me comes one who baptizes you in spirit and fire.” He (John) baptized no one with fire. “Yet there are some people,” as Heracleon says, “who mark the ears of those being sealed with fire” (ἔνιοι δέ … πυρὶ τὰ ὦτα τῶν σφραγιζομένων κατασημήναντο¹¹⁸). Thus they understood the apostolic word.

(Clement, Ecl. 25.1–2)

To be sure, Heracleon did not say that these people are Carpocratians (or Marcellinians), but it seems a reasonable hypothesis. Heracleon and Marcellina were contemporaries and probably lived in Rome, at least for a time, between 160–180 CE.

Carpocratian branding was not a second baptism, it seems, but a supplement to ordinary baptismal practice.¹¹⁹ It constituted the spiritually amplified “baptism of fire” mentioned by John the Baptist. The baptism of fire did not necessarily happen immediately after the baptism of water. It was part of a two-level initiation. Those who received the second level may have been “water baptized” years before they were “fire baptized.” In this reconstruction, neophytes would have been baptized with water while the spiritually mature were “fire-baptized” (i.e., branded). Higher initiations, in this scenario, probably entailed higher expectations of moral and social commitment. Perhaps we can identify the fire-baptized with those Carpocratians who, in imitation of Christ, tried to be redeemed in a single reincarnation.

The ear was chosen as the site of branding. The organ of hearing could have symbolized understanding or obedience. Pliny the Elder claimed that the lobe of the ear specifically is the “place of memory” (memoriae locus), and it is this place that Romans touch when calling a person to witness. “Behind the right ear (post aurem aeque dexteram),” specifically, “is the seat of Nemesis,” Pliny wrote. In order to ask the gods to pardon inappropriate language, a Roman would touch the back of the right ear after touching the mouth (Nat. 11.251). The right—as opposed to the left—ear probably signified correct listening or understanding.

The brand mark, since it was on the back of the right ear lobe, would not have been immediately visible. It would have been apparent, however, to those who knew what to look for. It was thus a way for group members to recognize each another. (Compare Minucius Felix, Oct. 9: “they [Christians] know one another by secret marks and insignia”). Those branded in this way may have called themselves, or have been called by others, “brands of hearing” (ἀκοῆς καυστήρια), as reported by Celsus (in Origen, Cels. 5.64). This was probably not a pejorative label (contrast 1 Tim 4:2: κεκαυστηριασμένων τὴν ἰδίαν συνείδησιν). Rather, the term designated the higher initiates who could truly hear or understand the fullness of the Christian message.

The “Sirens,” on the other hand, is Celsus’s own pejorative term evidently referring to female leaders like Marcellina. Sirens were of course the deadly female creatures whose song proved irresistible to those (males) who passed along (Homer, Od. 12.37–46; cf. Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica 4.891–919; Hyginus, Fabulae 141; Clement, Protr. 1.12.118.4; Ref. 7.13.1–2). By labeling Marcellina a “Siren,” Celsus implicitly conceded her capacity for persuasion. Aristo the Stoic, whose ethical views we have already discussed, was called “Siren” for this very reason (DL, Vita Phil. 160–612: ἦν δέ τις πειστικὸς καὶ ὄχλῳ πεποιημένος).

According to Celsus, the “Sirens” danced out (that is, revealed) their mysteries (cf., e.g., Lucian, Salt. 15.8; Achilles Tatius, Leucippe and Clitophon 4.8.3; Epictetus, Diss. 3.21.13; Clement, Strom. 1.2.21.2).¹²⁰ “Mysteries” had, by the late second century, come to mean little more than the teachings and rituals of a religious sect undisclosed to the public. According to Celsus, Marcellina acted as a revealer of secret teachings and as a “sophist.” Insofar as σοφίστρια identifies an expert female teacher and initiator, the title fits Marcellina reasonably well.

Text and translation

Irenaeus, AH 1.25.6	Origen, Against Celsus 5.62	Eusebius, HE 4.7.9	Epiphanius, Pan. 27.6.1, 8
Unde et Marcellina, quae Romam sub Aniceto venit, cum esset huius doctrinae, multos exterminavit. gnosticos se autem vocant.	οἶδε καὶ Μαρκελλιανοὺς ἀπὸ Μαρκελλίνας καὶ Ἁρποκρατιανοὺς ἀπὸ Σαλώμης καὶ ἄλλους ἀπὸ Μαριάμμης καὶ ἄλλους ἀπὸ Μάρθας.	Καρποκρά-την, ἑτέρας αἱρέσεως τῆς τῶν γνωστικῶν ἐπικληθείσης πατέρα.	1. ἦλθεν δὲ εἰς ἡμὰς ἤδη πως Μαρκελλίνα τις ὑπ’ αὐτῶν ἀπατηθεῖσα, ἥ πολλοὺς ἐλυμήνατο ἐν χρόνοις Ἀνικήτου ἐπισκόπου Ῥώμης. … 8. καὶ ἔνθεν γέγονεν ἀρχὴ γνωστικῶν τῶν καλουμένων.
From these came Marcellina, who under Anicetus came to Rome. Since she was of this doctrine, and she exterminated many people. They call themselves “gnostics.”	He (Celsus) knows Marcellinians from Marcellina and Harpocratians from Salome and others from Mariamme and others from Martha.	Carpocrates (was) father of another heresy, with the title of “gnostics.”	There came to us already, I think, a certain Marcellina, who was deceived by them. She laid waste to many people in the times of Anicetus bishop of Rome … 121 And from this source there came about the beginning of those called “gnostics.”

Commentary

The Latin manuscripts of Irenaeus have some noteworthy variants. Instead of cum esset huius doctrinae (“since she was of this doctrine”), codex Claromontanus reads cum esset veri doctrinae (“though she [Marcellina] was of the true doctrine”). It is an interesting slip—if slip it was—and would immediately raise the question how Marcellina “exterminated” people if she taught the true teaching. Another tantalizing reading is provided by Codex Arundelianus and Vaticanus, where we find that Marcellina’s group call themselves “unknowers” (ignosticos). This uncommon term might be taken to indicate a kind of apophatic mentality. Clement called his group of higher initiates “those who know by the unknown” (οἱ ἐν τῷ ἀγνώστῳ γνώστικοι, Strom. 5.1.1.5). These alternative readings, however, are not attested well enough to replace the accepted text.

According to Irenaeus, Marcellina was a Carpocratian who evidently lived in Rome and led a Christian movement. In this endeavor she attracted many people. Indeed, outsiders like Celsus came to call her group “Marcellinians” (Origen, Cels. 5.62). This particular name may indicate a degree of independence from Carpocrates and other Carpocratians. Irenaeus only said that Marcellina was “of this [or: his] doctrine” (cum esset huius doctrinae). Unger and Dillon translate doctrina here as “school,” since “‘school,’” they claim, “is much better in context.” They even conjecture that the underlying Greek of doctrina was διδασκάλειον.¹²² Nevertheless the more common rendering “teaching” makes good sense here.

The fact that Celsus grouped Marcellina with three first-generation female disciples of Jesus (Salome, Mariamme, and Martha) may indicate that Marcellina put herself in a kind of succession of female disciples of Jesus.

Salome is typically taken to be the disciple of Jesus mentioned in Mark 15:40; 16:1; Gos. Thom. 61; 1 Apoc. Jas. (NCH V.3) 40.25–26; Pistis Sophia 3.132 (Schmidt-MacDermot 338–40). Alternatively, Nicola Denzey Lewis hypothesizes that this Salome could have been an otherwise unknown “female religious entrepreneur” who “adopted this name for herself.”¹²³ This seems unlikely, since Salome stands in close proximity to two other well-known biblical women: Mariamme (or Mary) and Martha. Richard Bauckham opines that this passage (of Celsus) about Salome,

is the only extant reference which requires us to suppose that there must have been substantial material about Salome—in the form of teaching given to her—which is now lost. But this lost material was no doubt produced by the Carpocratians themselves and was peculiar to them. The particular prominence of Salome in Egyptian Gospel traditions, which we have already established, would explain why the Carpocratians selected her as authority for their own claim to a tradition from Jesus.¹²⁴

We do not have any evidence of Carpocratians producing “substantial material about Salome.” Salome was important to Marcellina, whose known activity was in Rome, not Egypt. To be sure, Salome is indeed prominent in the Gospel according to the Egyptians.¹²⁵ This gospel was evidently written in Greek in the early second century CE. It featured a dialogue between Jesus and Salome which contained the following sayings:

1. Jesus said, “I have come to bring female works to an end.”

2. Salome said, “How long will humans die?”

Jesus said, “As long as women give birth.”

3. Salome said, “I did well, then, by not giving birth?”

Jesus said, “Eat every plant, but do not eat one that has bitterness.”¹²⁶

When Salome asked when the things about which she inquired would be known, Jesus said, “When you have trampled on the garment of shame and when the two become one and the male with the female is neither male nor female” (Strom. 3.13.92.2; cf. Gos. Thom. 49–50). Such evidence indicates that Salome, who did not give (physical) birth, was aligned with Jesus’s ascetic admonishment. She herself was evidently a model of a Christian who refused genital coitus for the purpose of bringing “female works” (i.e., the work of sexual desire and reproduction) to an end.¹²⁷ The soteriology of the Gospel according to the Egyptians agrees with the Carpocratian Epiphanes insofar as Epiphanes affirmed the fundamental equality of male and female.¹²⁸

The saying about Salome in the Gospel of Thomas is also illuminating. Here Salome asks Jesus why he has come up to her couch and eaten from her table. The couch (ϭⲗⲟϭ) is probably a dining couch, not a marriage bed. Jesus responds to Salome that if someone becomes equal (ϣⲏϣ—a commonly accepted emendation of ϣⲏϥ, “destroyed”) that person will be filled with light. Salome, who is explicitly called a disciple” (ⲙⲁⲑⲏⲧⲏⲥ), is probably envisioned as an equal one. The question is, “equal to what?” If the implication is “equal to Jesus,” then there is a connection to Carpocratian teaching as expressed in Irenaeus, AH 1.25.2.¹²⁹

As for Mariamme/Mary, she could be Mary of Bethany, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of Jesus, or some conflation of all three.¹³⁰ Martha and Mary appear together in Luke 10:38–42 and John 11:17–32; 12:2–3. Mary of Bethany sat at the feet of Jesus (Luke 10:39). An otherwise unidentified Mary is a frequent dialogue partner with Jesus (Dial. Sav. [NHC III.5] 126.18–20; 137.3–6; 139.8–13; 140.14–19; Soph. Jes. Chr. [NHC III.4] 98.9–11; 114.9–12). She was said to have passed on private teaching from Jesus involving a vision of the soul’s ascent to heaven (Gos. Mary).¹³¹ The literature in which Mary appears also has an ascetic inclination. Mary is a woman who, like Salome, conquers her passions and transcends the cycle of birth and death. If (at least some) Carpocratians chose Mary and Salome as their apostolic models, then their reputation as licentious seems ill-founded.

As for Martha, she appears in a serving (diaconate-like) role in Luke 10:38–42 and John 12:2–3, which earned her a reputation for industry. In John 11:17–32, she approaches Jesus before Mary and makes a confession that he is the Christ and son of God entering the world. The Epistula Apostolorum (about 150 CE) presents Martha as one of the women who attempted to anoint Jesus in his tomb. In the same context, she becomes a witness—even the first witness—of the resurrection. Hippolytus, or the author of the Song of Songs Commentary, depicted Martha as the apostle to the apostles, a witness to the resurrection who is typically mentioned before Mary. Martha plays a role in the Pistis Sophia 1.38; 1.57; 2.73; 2.80 (Schmidt-MacDermot 61–2, 111–12, 163–4, 176–7). Finally, Martha appears in several Christian liturgies and in Christian amulets.¹³²

Celsus apparently imagined that Carpocratians were split up into four factions: (1) Harpocratians (apparently a mistake for Carpocratians) from Salome, (2) Marcellinians from Marcellina, (3) those “from” Martha, and (4) those “from” Mary. Were there actually different groups of Carpocratians who venerated different female Christians as (apostolic or subapostolic) founders? This is a possibility. But Marcellina, as a flesh-and-blood Roman Christian leader, was different from the other three biblical (biblical and idealized) women. My sense is that Celsus, to emphasize early Christian cacophony, wished to emphasize the diversity of early Christian groups even when it did not exist.¹³³ Origen himself criticized Celsus on this point. He insisted that he had never encountered a “Harpocratian” follower of Salome, or followers of Martha, or of Mariamme (Cels. 5.62). Yet Origen certainly knew about Carpocratians.

Heresiologists typically dated Marcellina with reference to Anicetus. Anicetus was said to have led a church network in Rome between 155–166 CE. Celsus mentioned Marcellina’s group around 175 CE. Irenaeus discussed Marcellina’s group about 180 CE. Possibly Marcellina was still alive and active at the time.

Irenaeus reported that Marcellina’s group called themselves “gnostics,” a substantive adjective that probably meant “endowed with (spiritual) knowledge or insight.” In antiquity, the label designated spiritually and intellectually mature Christians.¹³⁴ Paul had written, “we all have gnosis” (1 Cor. 8:1). He referred to these knowers as “perfect people,” “initiates,” and “spirituals” (1 Cor 2:6; 3:1). At least half a dozen Christian teachers and groups of the second century claimed the title “gnostic.”¹³⁵ The widespread claim to the title indicates fluidity in the use of “gnostic” at the time, along with its positive valence.¹³⁶ In the early to mid- second century, the author of 1 Timothy argued against what he considered to be a “gnosis falsely-so-called” (6:20). Irenaeus was the first heresiologist among many to make war on so-called “gnostics,” who generally referred to a larger conglomerate of Christian opponents that included the followers of Simon, Menander, Saturninus, Basilides, and Carpocrates (AH 2.31.1, cf. 4.6.4).¹³⁷

Some Marcellinians may well have referred to themselves as “gnostics.” Nevertheless, “gnostic” was probably not the official designation of Marcellina’s group. Celsus distinguished a group of “gnostics” before he mentioned the “Marcellinians” (Origen, Cels. 5.61–2). Carpocratians (including the Marcellinians) said they were saved “by faith and love,” not gnosis.¹³⁸ Both Irenaeus (AH 1.25.3) and the Refutator (7.32.6) accused Carpocratian Christians of defaming the “divine name of the church.” Apparently, then, Carpocratians referred to their group as a “church” or Christian “assembly” (ἐκκλησία). They appealed specifically to traditions handed on from Jesus to his disciples, three of which are named (Salome, Mariamme, Martha). In this sense, the Carpocratian church was as apostolic (connected to witnesses of the resurrected Jesus) as any other. Eusebius and Epiphanius (Pan. 27.3.3) explicitly said that Carpocrations called themselves Christians.¹³⁹

When one compares heresiologists, one discovers that the branches of the gnostic “family tree” were tangled indeed. Reading Epiphanius, we are given to believe that “those called gnostics (or Gnostics)” came from Marcellina. If so, Marcellina was apparently the founder of Epiphanius’s diffuse collective of “Gnostics” (which included Nicolaitans, Stratiotics, and Phibionites, and so on Pan. 25–6). If one only read Eusebius’s HE 4.7.9, however, one would think that Carpocrates was the father of the “gnostics.”¹⁴⁰ Yet we know that Eusebius was familiar with Irenaeus’s other claims that Simon of Samaria and Nicolaus (from Acts 6) were the founders of the “gnosis falsely-so-called” (AH 1.23.4; 3.11.1). Epiphanius believed that Carpocrates contributed—along with Simon, Menander, Saturninus, Basilides, and Valentinus—to the creation of a gnostic αἵρεσις.¹⁴¹ In sum, the search for a single founder of a concrete group of “gnostics” is hopeless, even if one wants to make “Gnostic” the proper name of the Seed of Seth.¹⁴²

Epiphanius’s pretended knowledge that Marcellina came “to us” (εἰς ἡμὰς) makes it seems as if Epiphanius was writing from late second-century Rome. Epiphanius may have taken this phrase from another source, but I doubt it.¹⁴³ This heresiologist took every opportunity to indicate he had inside and personal knowledge of his opponents—even when this was impossible.

Text and translation

Irenaeus, AH 1.25.6	Ref. 7.32.8	Epiphanius, Pan. 27.6.9–10
Et imagines quasdam quidem depictas, quasdam autem et de reliqua materia fabricatas habent, dicentes formam Christi factam a Pilato illo in tempore in quo fuit Iesus cum hominibus. Et has coronant, et proponunt eas cum imaginibus mundi philosophorum, videlicet cum imagine Pythagorae et Platonis, et Aristotelis et reliquorum et reliquam observationem circa eas similiter ut gentes faciunt.	καὶ εἰκόνας δὲ κατασκευάζουσι τοῦ Χριστοῦ, λέγοντες ὑπὸ Πιλάτου τῷ καιρῷ ἐκείνῳ γενῆσθαι.	9. ἔχουσι δὲ εἰκόνας ἐνζωγράφους διὰ χρωμάτων, ἀλλὰ καὶ οἱ μὲν ἐκ χρυσοῦ καὶ ἀργύρου καὶ λοιπῆς ὕλης, ἅτινα ἐκτυπώματα φασιν εἶναι τοῦ Ἰησοῦ καὶ ταῦτα ὑπὸ Ποντίου Πιλάτου γεγενήσθαι, τουτέστιν τὰ ἐκτυπώματα τοῦ αὐτοῦ Ἰησοῦ ὅτε ἐνεδήμει τῷ τῶν ἀνθρώπων γένει. 10. κρύβδην δὲ τὰς τοιαύτας ἔχουσιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ φιλοσόφων τινῶν, Πυθαγόρου καὶ Πλάτωνος καὶ Ἀριστοτέλους καὶ λοιπῶν, μεθ’ ὧν φιλοσόφων καὶ ἕτερα ἐκτυπώματα τοῦ Ἰησοῦ τιθέασιν, ἱδρύσαντές τε προσκ-υνοῦσι καὶ τὰ τῶν ἐθνῶν ἐπιτελοῦσι μυστήρια. στήσαντες γὰρ ταύτας τὰς ἐικόνας τὰ τῶν ἐθνῶν ἔθη λοιπὸν ποιοῦσι. τίνα δέ ἐστιν ἐθνῶν ἔθη ἀλλ’ ἤ θυσίαι καὶ τὰ ἄλλα;
They have certain images, some painted, some made from other materials, claiming that the representation of Christ was made by Pilate when Jesus lived among people. They also crown these images, and set them up with the images of the world’s philosophers, for instance with the images of Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle and others, and they pay the other respects accorded to them just as the Gentiles do.	They also manufacture images of Christ, claiming that they were made by Pilate during his time.	They have images painted with colors, though some are of gold, silver, and other material. These, they say, are figures of Jesus made by Pontius Pilate—that is, figures of the same Jesus when he sojourned among humankind. They have such (figures) in secret, but also of certain philosophers—Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, and the rest. They place still other figures of Jesus with these philosophers. They set (them) up and worship them, performing the mysteries of the Gentiles. For having set up these statues, they do the remaining customs of the Gentiles. What are these Gentiles customs but sacrifices and the other things?

Commentary

The plural habent in Irenaeus seems to refer to the followers of Marcellina. These Christians venerated images (εἰκόνες/imagines) of Jesus, a word which might be translated “icons.” The word is significant, because Greek speakers could distinguish between an official cult image honored in a temple (ἄγαλμα)—what early Christians polemically called an “idol” (εἴδωλον)—from the image of a benefactor or founder set up in a marketplace or private setting.¹⁴⁴ The Carpocratian images were apparently painted pictures and/or figurines made of various materials. Epiphanius extrapolated that the materials were silver and gold, apparently to highlight that the function of the icons as cult statues.

These images were thought to go back to a representation “made” by Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor who, according to the gospels, condemned Jesus to death.¹⁴⁵ Presumably we can extrapolate that Pilate had a likeness made, not that he was himself the artist. We can only speculate why, for the Carpocratians, Pilate would have wanted a likeness of Jesus. According to developing Christian legend, Pilate recognized the significance of Jesus and effectively became a Christian.¹⁴⁶ One suspects that, for these Carpocratians, Pilate recognized the greatness of Jesus and so wanted him memorialized. The Refutator’s verb κατασκευάζουσι, likely with a pejorative nuance (“fabricate”/“concoct”) makes it seem as if the Carpocratians crafted their own images and only claimed these images went back to the time of Pilate.

According to Irenaeus, Carpocratians crowned their icons of Jesus, along with the statues of other philosophers. Keeping busts or images of the great philosophers was an established practice in Rome.¹⁴⁷ Reportedly, the emperor Marcus Aurelius (reigned 161–180 CE) kept golden images of his teachers in his household shrine (in larario, SHA Marcus 3.5). Likewise, we are told that the emperor Alexander Severus (reigned 222–235 CE) venerated a little statue of Jesus among deified emperors and sages like Apollonius of Tyana, Orpheus, and Abraham.¹⁴⁸ There were also non-cultic uses of such images. The busts of philosophers could be used simply to decorate one’s personal library (Lucian, Nigrinus 3). We do not know where Carpocratians set up their images of Jesus, Pythagoras, and Plato. Were they present in Marcellina’s urban home or in a suburban villa?¹⁴⁹ Were they in some sort of lararium or household shrine?¹⁵⁰ There is of course abundant archaeological evidence for household images found all throughout Greece, Italy, and western Europe.¹⁵¹

We would also like to know how Jesus was portrayed. In the company of philosophers, evidently he looked like a philosopher as well. One might hypothesize the presence of a beard, a philosopher’s cloak (pallium) with perhaps a scroll in hand. Tertullian refers to a mock image, presumably of Jesus, of a donkey-headed “god of the Christians” in a toga with a scroll in hand (Nat. 1.14.1; Apol. 16.12).

Against Epiphanius, Carpocratians do not seems to have kept their icon secret (κρύβδην). The images were known even to their enemies. It is misleading, moreover, to assimilate the Carpocratian veneration of images to Greek “mysteries,” which were different and more complex religious phenomena. If “sacrifices” were performed for the images, we might hypothesize the burning of incense and the sprinkling of flower petals. Irenaeus mentioned crowning, evidently with a wreathe or bouquet of flowers. Apuleius of Madaura (about 124–170 CE) had a statue of a god among his books to whom on holidays he burned incense and poured undiluted wine (Apol. 63.2).

There is an interesting analogy for this kind of veneration in the Acts of John (roughly contemporary with Marcellina’s movement in Rome). This text presents Lycomedes, a man resurrected by the apostle John, venerating John’s portrait with crowns, little altars, and lamps. When John himself sees these things, he remarks that Lycomedes lives as a Gentile (ἐθνικῶς ζῶντα). Lycomedes replies that for him, John is a “god,” since John had raised Lycomedes and his wife from the dead. Lycomedes adds: “If one must, after God, call our human benefactors gods, you are the one painted in the picture, and you I crown, kiss, and venerate since you have become a beneficent guide to me” (Acts John 27). The connection of deity and benefaction was firmly established in Mediterranean culture.¹⁵² If Carpocratians viewed Jesus as their benefactor, it was in the sense that he had modeled for them a new way of righteous living in triumph over false laws, lesser powers, and human passions.

It seems tendentious to say that Carpocratians, because they venerated images, had “a great tolerance for pagan religious rites.”¹⁵³ The Christians led by Marcellina would not have considered their rites “pagan.” Heresiologists make this claim, but they were involved in a project of social and theological ostracizing.¹⁵⁴ Image veneration was of course widespread in the Mediterranean world (Porphyry, Abst. 2.16.5); yet Carpocratians, among many other Christians, were capable of making adjustments to their practices which, to their minds at least, brought the rites into the framework of Christian worship.

It was apparently important that the Carpocratian depiction of Jesus be accurate. Pilate himself was invoked apparently to ensure the artistic accuracy of the model (whether the model survived is not clear).

As for the image of Aristotle, it seems to be an outlier among Pythagoras and Plato. We detect no specifically Peripatetic influence on Carpocratians. Perhaps heresiologists were extrapolating, as was common. Augustine, following a summary of Epiphanius (Anaceph. II.27.4), added that Carpocratians had images of Paul and Homer as well. This is a good indication that heresiologists lacked specific information. Perhaps the tradition about Paul grew from an awareness that Carpocratians like Epiphanes employed Paul’s letters.

By placing Jesus among the philosophers, Carpocratians probably felt that they were exalting Jesus by giving him his rightful place among the intellectual and spiritual titans of the time. Justin Martyr, by analogy, lauded Socrates as a man who knew the Logos and tried to drive out demons from humankind.¹⁵⁵ By venerating Christ along with Pythagoras and Plato, Marcellinians were not necessarily making Christ and these philosophers equal. A ranking system could have been in place through the bestowal of a special crown, or the giving of special sacrifices in honor of Christ.

The Carpocratian Christ was, in all likelihood, placed in the mold of a philosopher, but he was more than a philosopher. Salvation, after all, did not come through Pythagoras or Plato, even if their souls were considered to be wise and more purely divine.¹⁵⁶ Jesus’s soul was the only one explicitly mentioned as strong enough to recall the heavenly vision it had seen in its preexistent state; it was the only soul righteous and wise enough to reject human laws and follow higher, divine principles. If Pythagoras and Plato were considered comparable sages (perhaps forerunners of Jesus), Jesus still had pride of place in the Carpocratian system.

Carpocratian soteriology

Text and translation

AAH 3.1	Epiphanius, Pan. 27.6.11	Filastrius, Div. Haer. 35.3
animarum sola salute, multas 157 corporis resurrectiones.	ψυχῆς δὲ εἶναι μόνης σωτηρίαν φασὶ καὶ οὐχὶ σωμάτων.	cuius animam in caelum susceptam praedicant, carnem vero in terram dimissam aestimant, animique salutem solius, carnis autem non fieri salutem opinantur.
There is salvation only of souls and many resurrections of the body.	There is salvation of the soul alone, they say, and not of bodies.	His (Jesus’s) soul, they preach, was received in heaven, while his flesh was left on earth. There is salvation of the soul alone; they think there is no salvation of flesh.

Commentary

Irenaeus did not report the datum that, for Carpocratians, salvation was limited to the soul. This information is supplied only by AAH, Epiphanius, and Filastrius, all of whom probably used a common source. This source, apparently Syntag32, may or may not be reliable. The salvation of the soul alone was of course a common Platonic doctrine and it does not conflict with what we know of Carpocratian teaching elsewhere.

It must be said, however, that a strict division between soul and body is probably misleading, because many ancient philosophers considered the human soul or spirit to consist of some kind of subtler body, fit for a celestial ecology.¹⁵⁸ Within such a framework it would have been inadequate to say that there was salvation for the soul (a subtle kind of body), “and not of bodies” (so Epiphanius). Filastrius’s use of “flesh” (carnis) more helpfully specifies that the body left behind denotes the earthly, perishable body (which becomes a corpse). We do not know what the Carpocratians actually thought regarding the composition of the soul.

From Filastrius, we gather that Carpocratian soteriology was based on Carpocratian Jesuology: that Jesus left his corpse on earth when he ascended into heaven. Evidently, then, Carpocratians would have denied the gospel traditions of the empty tomb; for them, there was simply no need for fleshly resurrection, a point we see affirmed in other early Christian texts (Apoc. Pet. [NHC VII,3] 81.3–83.15; Treat. Res. [NHC 1,4] 45.23–46.2; 47.30–48.1). Only the soul of Jesus was saved; and such is true for the believer. Likely, then, the resurrection and ascension of Jesus from earth was probably paradigmatic for all Christians. All saved persons would “resurrect” to heaven (i.e., ascend there). And like Jesus, they would all leave their fleshly bodies (or corpses) behind.

Kroymann corrected the text of AAH so that, for Carpocratians, “there are no resurrections of the body” (nullas corporis resurrectiones). The reading multas corporis resurrectiones is, however, better attested. I accept this reading and understand it as an attempt to translate transmigration into Christian terms. The Refutator was willing to attribute a doctrine of “resurrection” to both the Stoics and Heraclitus (Ref. 1.21.5; 9.10.6), though they did not use the term (ἀνάστασ-ις).¹⁵⁹ According to Celsus, Christian resurrection was a plagiarized form of transmigration (Origen, Cels. 7.32; cf. 4.17). Some Christians of his time were perhaps willing to redescribe transmigration as a form of resurrection. Carpocratians, perhaps, were among them.

Such a doctrine would not confirm Irenaeus’s later testimony (AH 2.31.2) that Carpocratians (along with Simonians) “claim that the resurrection from the dead is the knowledge of what they call truth.” This teaching is not otherwise attested for Carpocratians. The accusation seems designed to deny the relevance of corporeal resurrection. Resurrection happens through knowledge not through corporeal change. Judging from AAH, however, this teaching is untrue. There were indeed corporeal “resurrections” for Carpocrates, but via transmigration.

To sum up: Carpocratians did not believe in the revivification or renewal of corpses, but in the preexistence and purification of the souls which could “stand again” (ἀνίστημι) in other human bodies, that is, in other human lives. In this reconstruction, multiple resurrections were possible and necessary due to the persistence of impurity. Carpocratian “resurrection” was thus different from salvation. Salvation, for Carpocratians, meant breaking out of the cycle of transmigrations/resurrections. Perhaps this understanding was part of the greater “gnosis” of the Carpocratians. But their greater knowledge also demanded greater faith and greater love, which were the only explicit means of Carpocratian salvation.

My commentary on the earliest Carpocrates reports is now complete. Before we turn, however, to profile Carpocrates, Marcellina, and Epiphanes, we must pause to discuss a final claimed source for understanding Carpocratian Christianity, the so-called Epistle to Theodore.

Notes

1. M. Smith, CA, 295–350 (Appendix B); Whitley, “Blasphemy,” 208–60 (Appendix C).

2. Irenaeus, AH 3.3.4; Eusebius, HE 5.20.5–7.

3. Eusebius, HE 5.4.1.

4. On Irenaeus, see further Paul Foster and Sara Parvis, eds., Irenaeus: Life, Scripture, and Legacy (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2012); John Behr, Irenaeus of Lyon: Identifying Christianity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); Jared Secord, “Irenaeus at Rome: The Greek Context of Christian Intellectual Life in the Second Century,” in Irénée entre Asie et Occident: Actes de la journée du 30 juin 2014 à Lyon, ed. Agnès Bastit (Paris: Institute for Augustinian Studies, 2021), 141–60.

5. See further Matthijs den Dulk, “Justin Martyr and the Authorship of the Earliest Anti-Heretical Treatise,” VC 72 (2018): 471–83.

6. Smith, Guilt, 143.

7. Lipsius, Zur Quellenkritik des Epiphanios (Vienna: Braumüller, 1865), 60.

8. Harnack, Zur Quellenkritik der Geschichte des Gnosticismus (Leipzig: Oskar Leiner, 1973), 46. Summary in D. Adolf Hilgenfeld, Die Ketzergeschichte des Urchristenthums (Leipzig: Fues’s Verlag, 1884), 50.

9. See the chart in Smith, Guilt, 143.

10. M. Markovich wrongly added οἱ δὲ Καρποκρατιανοί to Justin’s Dial. 35.6, from Hegesippus in his Iustini Martyris Dialogus cum Tryphone, PTS 47 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2005), 129.

11. Secord, “Irenaeus in Rome,” 143.

12. Hegesippus quoted by Eusebius, HE 4.22.5.

13. Jan H. Waszink, ed., De anima (Amsterdam: J.M. Meulenhoff, 1947), 6.

14. Lipsius, Zur Quellenkritik, 33–5; cf. Lipsius, Die Quellen der ältesten Ketzergeschichte neu untersucht (Leipzig: J. A. Barth, 1875), 117–57; Pierre Nautin, Hippolyte contre les heresies (Paris: Cerf, 1949).

15. Lipsius, Die Quellen, 117–24.

16. Litwa, Refutation of All Heresies, WGRW 40 (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2016), xxxii–xlii.

17. Löhr, Basilides, 280–4.

18. Aline Pourkier, L’hérésiologie chez Épiphane de Salamine (Paris: Beauchesne, 1992), 261.

19. For the editions used in what follows, see this chapter’s references. Significant variants in the Greek and Latin texts are flagged in the notes and commentary.

20. Einar Thomassen, “Were There Valentinian Schools?” 33. See also Thomassen, “Gnosis and Philosophy in Competition,” 61–74.

21. Glenn W. Most, “Philosophy and Religion,” in The Cambridge Companion to Greek and Roman Philosophy, ed. D.N. Sedley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 300–22 at 317–22.

22. See further Pourkier, L’hérésiologie, 263.

23. An emendation of Fabricius. Manuscripts read deorum (“of the gods”).

24. Filastrius called these powers “emanations,” perhaps by analogy with Valentinian thought.

25. Gen 1:26; Philo, Opif., 72–5; Conf., 171–4; Tri. Trac. (NHC I,5) 112.19–13.1; Justin, Dial. 62.3; Josephus, C. Ap 2.192; Jarl Fossum, The Name of God and the Angel of the Lord: Samaritan and Jewish Concepts of Intermediation and the Origin of Gnosticism. WUNT 36 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1985), 192–213; Markschies, Valentinus Gnosticus? 18–24.

26. In addition to the texts cited below, see Athanasius, Oration I Against the Arians (PG 26.129): ὁ δὲ Καρποκράτης ἀγγέλους τοῦ κόσμου δημιουργοὺς εἶναι φησι. See further Smith, CA 327; Whitley, “Blasphemy,” 58, 243.

27. Manuscripts here read infirmior.

28. Here following codex Florentinus Magliabechianus, Conv. soppr. I,VI,10 (15th c.). Codex Scelestadtensis 439 (11th c.) and codex Florentinus Magliabechianus, Conv. soppr. I, VI,9 (15th c.) read colligeret.

29. Here following codex Scelestadtensis 439. Later readings include temptata (codex Florentinus Magliabechianus, Conv. soppr. I, VI,9), and temptatam (codex Florentinus Magliabechianus, Conv. soppr. I,VI,10). Kroymann printed retenta (CCSL II/2.1405).

30. Pouderon (“‘Jewish,’ ‘Christian,’ and ‘Gnostic’ Groups,” 164), who writes, “Concerning Carpocrates, this master follows an Adoptionist doctrine close to that of the Ebionites, according to which Jesus was born from the encounter between a Pace woman and a man and was chosen for Justice receiving the Christ in himself at the moment of his baptism.”

31. Pétrement, Pace Separate God, 347.

32. Pourkier, L’hérésiologie, 265–6.

33. Grypeou, Pace Vollkommene Pascha, 140.

34. Mark Edwards, Aristotle and Christian Thought (London: Taylor & Francis, 2019), 45.

35. This is also the view of Clement, Strom. 3.4.25.4. See further René Brouwer, The Stoic Sage: The Early Stoics on Wisdom, Sagehood and Socrates (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 92–135; Runar M. Thorsteinsson, Jesus as Philosopher: The Moral Sage in the Synoptic Gospels (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 33–184.

36. GCS 10/1:302 (apparatus).

37. For the passions as the tortures of Hades, cf. Lucretius, Rerum natura 3.978–1023; Philo, Her, 45, 78, 269–70; Post. 31; Cong. 57; Cher 78; Decal. 149; Spec. 4.81.

38. P reads τὸ τύφος.

39. P reads αὐτοὶς.

40. P reads ὁμοίως.

41. P reads λέγοισι.

42. Dominic J. Unger with John J. Dillon, St. Irenaeus of Lyons Against the Heresies Volume 1, ACW 55 (New York: Newman Press, 1992), 88 (henceforth ACW 55).

43. Harvey, Pace Sancti Irenaei 1.205 n.2.

44. Pétrement, Separate God, 349.

45. In the Acts of John (J.K. Elliott, The Apocryphal New Testament [Oxford: Clarendon, 1993], 302–45), the apostle John performs at least five resurrections. Parts of this paragraph adapt language in my Found Christianities 130.

46. Another manuscript reads despectrice.

47. Waszink, De Anima, 299–300.

48. Waszink, De Anima, 300.

49. Ayse Tuzlak, “The Magician and the Heretic,” in Magic and Ritual in the Ancient World, ed. Paul Mirecki and Marvin Meyer (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 416–26; Kimberly B. Stratton, “The Rhetoric of ‘Magic’ in Early Christian Discourse: Gender, Power and the Construction of ‘Heresy,’” in Mapping Gender in Ancient Religious Discourses, ed. Todd Penner and Caroline Vander Stichele (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 89–114; Maijastina Kahlos, “The Early Church,” in The Cambridge History of Magic and Witchcraft in the West: From Antiquity to the Present, ed. David J. Collins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 148–82; Marco Frenchkowski, Magie im antiken Christentum: Eine Studie zur Alten Kirche und ihrem Umfeld (Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 2016), 259–68; Radcliffe G. Edmonds III, Drawing Down the Moon: Magic in the Ancient Greco-Roman World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019), 5–15.

50. David Frankfurter, “Beyond Magic and Superstition,” in A People’s History of Christianity. Volume 2: Late Ancient Christianity, ed. Virginia Burrus (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005), 255–84.

51. Smith, CA, 220. Ramsay MacMullen, Enemies of the Roman Order: Treason, Unrest, and Alienation in the Roman Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966), 124–6; James B. Rives, “Magic in Roman Law: The Reconstruction of a Crime,” Classical Antiquity 22, no. 2 (2003): 313–39; Frenchkowski, Magie, 275–8.

52. Smith, CA, 234; Andy M. Reimer, Miracle and Magic: A Study in the Acts of the Apostles and the Life of Apollonius of Tyana (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002), 212–25.

53. Edmonds, Drawing, 390.

54. This is no evidence that Marcus actually used love charms. The Refutator significantly omitted Irenaeus’s claims here.

55. Marvin Meyer and Richard Smith, eds., Ancient Christian Magic: Coptic Texts of Ritual Power (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1994).

56. Cf. Ref. 4.32–3; 35–6; SHA Did. Jul. 7.10; Origen, Princ. 3.3.3; PGM 1.86–7; 2.56; 3.710; 4.89; 5.1, 40, 376; 7.544; 62.32–3, 46. See further T. Hopfner, “Die Kindermedien in den griechisch-ägyptischen Zauberpapyri,” in Recueil d’études dédiées à la mémoire de N. P. Kondakov (Prague: Seminarium Kondakovianum, 1926), 65–74 at 74; Apuleius, Apol., 42–4 with the commentary of Adam Abt, Die Apologie des Apuleius von Madaura und die antike Zauberei (Giessen: Töpelmann, 1908), 158–190; James Kelhoffer, “‘Hippolytos’ and Magic. An Examination of Elenchos IV 28–42 and Related Passages in Light of the Papyri Graecae Magicae,” ZAC 11 (2008): 517–48 at 523.

57. Stowers, “Locating the Religion of Associations,” 303–4. See also Stowers, “Why Expert versus Nonexpert is Not Elite versus Popular Religion: The Case of the Third Century,” in Religious Competition in the Greco-Roman World, ed. Nathaniel P. DesRosiers and Lily C. Vuong (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2016), 139–53; Stowers, “The Religion of Plant and Animal Offerings versus the Religion of Meanings, Essences, and Textual Mysteries,” Ancient Mediterranean Sacrifice, ed. Jennifer Wright Knust and Zsuzsanna Várhelyi (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 35–50.

58. Dale B. Martin, Inventing Superstition: From the Hippocratics to the Christians (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007).

59. Stowers, “Locating,” 305. See further Heidi Wendt, At the Temple Gates: The Religion of Freelance Experts in the Roman Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).

60. Judging from Eusebius’s use of ἀγωγαῖς, one would think that Carpocratians only practiced love spells. Epiphanius also used the term ἀγώγιμα. For love spells, see Christopher Faraone, Ancient Greek Love Magic (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999); Naomi Janowitz, Magic in the Roman World: Pagans, Jews, and Christians (London: Routledge, 2001), 47–58.

61. See further Leda Jean Ciraolo, “Supernatural Assistants in the Greek Magical Papyri,” in Ancient Magic and Ritual Power, ed. Marvin Meyer and Paul Mirecki (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 279–95; Naomi Janowitz, Icons of Power: Ritual Practices in Late Antiquity (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002), 85–108.

62. For which see Radcliffe-Edmonds, Drawing, 53–90.

63. Latin translation in Smith, CA, 350; English translation in Whitley, “Blasphemy,” 260.

64. The Clermont manuscript reads detrectationem.

65. See further David Frankfurter, Evil Incarnate: Rumors of Demonic Conspiracy and Satanic Abuse in History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006).

66. G.W.H. Lampe, A Patristic Greek Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon, 1961), 620, s.v. θεῖος B.13.b.

67. Russell, Doctrine, 105–10; Ben Blackwell, Christosis: Pauline Soteriology in Light of Deification in Irenaeus and Cyril of Alexandria (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011).

68. Unger and Dillon in ACW 55:88.Pace

69. H. Gregory Snyder, who claims that in Epiphanes’s Pace On Justice good and evil are “merely human conventions” (“‘She Destroyed Multitudes,’ Marcellina’s Group in Rome,” in Women and Knowledge in Early Christianity 59).

70. Cf. Ref. 1.2.11; 1.3.2–3; 1.19.12; 6.26.1–3; Tertullian, An. 28.3–4. On Greco-Roman concepts of transmigration, see Herbert Strainge Long, A Study of the Doctrine of Metempsychosis in Greece from Pythagoras to Plato (PhD diss.; Princeton University, 1948); Friedrich Solmsen, “Reincarnation in Ancient and Early Christian Thought,” in idem, Kleine Schriften III (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1982), 465–94; Walter Burkert, Lore and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972), 138–41; James Luchte, Pythagoras and the Doctrine of Transmigration: Wandering Souls (London: Continuum, 2009); Karl Hoheisel, “Das frühe Christentum und die Seelenwanderung,” JAC 27/28 (1984–85): 24–46; Obeyesekere, Imagining Karma: Ethical Transformation in Amerindian, Buddhist and Greek Rebirth (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 190–318; Gabriele Cornelli, In Search of Pythagoreanism: Pythagoreanism as an Historiographical Category (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2013), 86–136.

71. E.g., CH 10.19 (but cf. SH 23.38, 42); Chaldean Oracles 62 (from Proclus, Commentary on Plato’s Republic 2.336.27–30). See further Heinrich Dörrie, “Kontroversen um die Seelenwanderung im kaiserzeitlichen Platonismus,” Hermes 85, no. 4 (1957): 414–35; Andrew Smith, “Did Porphyry Reject the Transmigration of Human Souls into Animals?” Rheinisches Museum 127 (1984): 276–84; Catherine Osborne, Dumb Beasts and Dead Philosophers: Humanity and the Humane in Ancient Philosophy and Literature (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007), 43–62.

72. Yli-Karjanmaa, Reincarnation in Philo of Alexandria, Studia Philonica Monographs 7 (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2015).

73. Runia, “Is Philo Committed to the Doctrine of Reincarnation?” SPhA 31 (2019): 107–25.

74. Origen, Commentary on Romans 5.1.25 = Löhr, Basilides frag. 18. Cf. Origen, Comm. Ser. 38 on Matthew = Löhr, Basilides frag. 17. Subsequent readers took Rom 7:9 to refer to the bodiless life of the soul (Methodius, Resurrection 1.57–8). See further Löhr, Basilides, 212–18.

75. Clement, Exc. 28 = Löhr, Basilides frag. 16.

76. This paragraph is taken from my Found Christianities 119. See further G. Casadio, “Manichean Metempsychosis. Typology and Historical Roots,” in Studia Manichaica 2, ed. G. Wiessner and H.J.-Klimkeit (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1992), 105–30; Carl-A. Keller, “La réincarnation dans le Gnosticisme, dans la Hermétisme et la Manichéisme,” in La reincarnation: Théories, raissonements et appréciations. Un symposium (Berne: Peter Lang, 1986), 135–58; Samuel Vollenweider, “Reinkarnation: ein abendländisches Erbstück,” in Horizonte neutestamentlicher Christologie: Studien zu Paulus und zur frühchristlicher Theologie (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002), 327–46.

77. See further Pamphilus, Apology for Origen, 173–88.

78. Here I concur with Whitley “Blasphemy,” 146.

79. Frank Williams translates ἀνδροβασία as “homosexual union” (The Panarion of Epiphanius of Salamis Book I [Sects 1–46], 2nd ed. [Leiden: Brill, 2009], 112); similarly Pourkier: “homosexualité masculine” (L’hérésiologie, 271). Yet importing the idea of homosexuality is probably misleading. The suffix βασία is formed from βαίνω, which can mean “mount” (e.g., Aristotle, History of Animals 575a13). The term ἀνδροβασία would thus refer to males mounting males, with the age of the men undetermined.

80. Edoardo Barra, “‘Faire des choses que l’on ne peut pas nommer,’ Fellation et cunnilingus en Grèce ancienne,” Clio. Femmes, Genre, Histoire 31 (2010): 53–77.

81. Williams, Rethinking, 169.

82. Epiphanius, in speaking of χρῆσις and ἔργον, probably preserves bits of Irenaeus’s Greek.

83. Pétrement, Separate God, 348.

84. Yli-Karjanmaa, Reincarnation, 117–19.

85. So Unger and Dillon in ACW 55:241, n.14.

86. John Kloppenborg, “Conflated Citations of the Synoptic Gospels: The Beginnings of Christian Doxographic Tradition?” in Gospels and Gospel Traditions in the Second Century: Experiments in Reception, ed. Jens Schröter, Tobias Nicklas and Joseph Verheyden, BZNW 235 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2019), 45–80.

87. Dieter T. Roth, The Text of Marcion’s Gospel (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 424; cf. Matthias Klinghardt, The Oldest Gospel and the Formation of the Canonical Gospels, 2 vols. (Leuven: Peeters, 2021), 2.896–901. See further Daniel A. Smith, “Marcion’s Gospel and the Synoptics,” in Gospels and Gospel Traditions in the Second Century, 129–74.

88. Whitley, “Blasphemy,” 94.

89. See further Helmut Koester, who documents a harmonization of Matthew and Luke in Justin Martyr (“The Text of the Synoptic Gospels in the Second Century,” in Gospel Traditions in the Second Century: Origins, Recensions, Text, and Transmission, ed. William L. Petersen [South Bend: Notre Dame University Press, 1989], 19–38 at 28–33).

90. The next saying (Sent. Sext. 40) is also relevant: “Blessed is the man whose soul no one will seize as it travels to God.”

91. This is suggested by Williams, Rethinking, 169.

92. Pistis Sophia 3.113 (Schmidt-MacDermot 295–6).

93. Dale B. Martin, “When Did Angels Become Demons?” JBL 129, no. 4 (2010): 657–77.

94. See further Yli-Karjanmaa, Reincarnation, 58–62, 119–20.

95. Obeyesekere, Imagining Karma, 199.

96. Clement also imagined superhuman toll collectors (οἱ τὸ τέλος ἀπαιτοῦντες) who hold back souls burdened with their own passions (Strom. 4.18.117.2; cf. 7.13.83.1).

97. See further Heinz Finé, Die Terminologie der Jenseitsvorstellungen bei Tertullian: Ein semasiologischer Beitrag zur Dogmengeschichte des Zwischenzustandes (Bonn: Peter Hanstein, 1958), 102–12.

98. Cf. Philo: “the true Hades is the life of the bad” (Congr. 57).

99. Simmons, Universal Salvation in Late Antiquity: Porphyry of Tyre and the Pagan-Christian Debate (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 107–13.

100. Unger and Dillon in ACW 55:89.Pace

101. The Latin reads: Et si quidem fiant haec apud eos quae sunt irreligiosa et iniusta et vetita, ego nequaquam credam. In conscriptionibus autem illorum sic conscriptum est et ipsa ita exponunt, Iesum dicentes in mysterio discipulis suis et apostolis seorsum locutum et illos exspostulasse, ut dignis et adsentientibus seorsum haec traderent.

102. Snyder supposes that Irenaeus did use Carpocratian writings, and those specifically of Marcellina’s group in Rome. He notes that the Refutator omits the sections in Irenaeus where the latter seems to depend on Carpocratian writings (“Marcellina’s Group,” 57–60). Instead of proposing multiple editions of Irenaeus’s AH 1, I think that reliance on Carpocratian texts was not very important to the Refutator.

103. The fact that Epiphanius used the first person plural (καταξιοῦμεν) does not mean that he had access to the direct words of the Carpocratian sources. Using the first person was a common rhetorical technique to foster a ring of authenticity and insider knowledge. See further William Campbell, We Passages in the Acts of the Apostles: The Narrator as Narrative Character (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2007).

104. Cf. Smith, Guilt, 142.

105. Michael Kok, Gospel on the Margins: The Reception of Mark in the Second Century (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2015), 247.

106. Cf. Gos. Phil. (NHC II,3) 67.27–30 with the comments of Einar Thomassen, “Gos. Philip 67.27–30: not ‘in a mystery,’” in Coptica-Gnostica-Manichaica: Mélanges offerts à Wolf-Peter Funk, ed. Louis Painchaud and Paul-Hubert Poirier (Laval: Laval University Press, 2006), 925–40. See also Christoph Markschies, “Esoteric Knowledge in Platonism and Christian Knowledge,” in Christian Teachers in Second-century Rome, ed. H. Gregory Snyder (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 45–59.

107. Yli-Karjanmaa (Reincarnation 247) argues that reincarnation was an esoteric teaching for Philo.

108. Here following the Greek from Theodoret, Fab. 1.5.3. The Latin reads: per fidem enim et caritatem salvari; reliqua vero, indifferentia cum sint, secundum opinionem hominum quaedam quidem bona, quaedam autem mala vocari, cum nihil natura malum sit.

109. Teresa Morgan, Roman Faith and Christian Faith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015); Benjamin Schliesser, “Faith in Early Christianity: An Encyclopedic and Bibliographical Outline,” in Glaube: Das Verständnis des Glaubens im frühen Christentum und in seiner jüdischen und hellenistisch-römischen Umwelt, ed. Jörg Frey, Benjamin Schliesser and Nadine Ueberschaer (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017), 3–50.

110. Timothy P. Jackson, The Priority of Love: Christian Charity and Social Justice (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003).

111. See further LS 1.354–9; 2.349–55.

112. Marie-Odile Goulet-Cazé, Les Kynika du Stoïcisme (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2003), 129–32.

113. On Aristo, see further Dudley, History of Cynicism, 99–102.

114. See Le Boulluec, Notion d’hérésie 1.131 with reference to Rev 2:14–15.

115. Irenaeus, AH 1.25.6; Epiphanius, Pan. 27.5.9.

116. Epiphanius also charged “Quintillianists” with piercing a baby with bronze needles (Pan. 48.14.6). For marking the body in religious contexts, see, e.g., to the Thracians, see Herodotus, Histories 5.6; Athenaeus, Deipn., 524d–e; Cicero, Off. 2.25; Plutarch, Sera, 12; Dio Chrysostom, Or., 14; Artemidorus, Oneirocritica 1.8; 3 Macc 2:29. According to Tertullian, soldiers of Mithras were marked on the forehead (Prescription 40). Other sources are cited by Susanna Elm, “‘Pierced by Bronze Needles’: Anti-Montanist Charges of Ritual Stigmatization in Their Fourth-Century Context,” JECS 4, no. 4 (1996): 409–39 at 417–19.

117. F.J. Dölger, “Die Sphragis als religiöse Brandmarkung im Einweihungsakt der gnostischen Karpokratianer,” Antike und Christentum 1 (1929): 73–8. Dölger criticized Usener, Das Weihnachtsfest, 2nd ed. (Bonn: Bouvier, 1911), 66, n .27 for relating the practice to levitical consecration (Exod 29:20; Lev 8:23–4; 14:14, 17, 25, 28). See further Whitley, “Blasphemy,” 25–7.

118. κατασημήναντο Sy; κατασημήιαντο L.

119. Dölger, “Sphragis,” 77–8. Cf. Irenaeus, Pace AH 1.21.2.

120. The author of EpThdr will use ἐξoρχέομαι with ἀπόρρητα as the object (EpThdr 1.22–3, with Commentary in Chapter 3). The expression, “dance out the mysteries” recalls famous crimes of Alcibiades and Diagoras of Melos (Clement, Protr. 2.12.1; Tatian, Or. 27.1).

121. In the intervening text, Epiphanius sets out a chronology of Roman bishops (cf. Irenaeus, AH 3.3.3; Eusebius, HE 5.6.1–2).

122. ACW 55:242, n.20.

123. Lewis, “Women,” 35.

124. Bauckham, “Salome the Sister of Jesus, Salome the Disciple of Jesus, and the Secret Gospel of Mark,” NovT 33, no. 3 (1991): 245–75 at 264. See also his Gospel Women: Studies of the Named Women in the Gospels (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 225–56.

125. This gospel is not the same as the Egyptian Gospel (more properly: Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit) used by the Seed of Seth and recovered at Nag Hammadi (III,2; IV,2).

126. Clement, Strom. 3.9.63.1; 3.6.45.3; 3.9.66.1; cf. Dial. Sav. III.5, 144.19–20. See further S. Petersen, “Zerstört die Werke der Weiblichkeit!” Maria Magdalena, Salome und andere Jüngerinnen Jesu in christlich-gnostlichen Schriften (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 208–20; Klauck, H.-J., Apocryphal Gospels: An Introduction (London: T&T Clark, 2003), 55–9; Christoph Markschies, “Das Evangelium nach den Ägyptern,” Antike christliche Apokryphen I/1 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012), 661–82.

127. Here following Clement, who understood “female” to mean “desire” and “works” to refer to “birth and decay” (Strom. 3.9.63.2).

128. Petersen, Zerstört 301. Epiphanes never advised that female works be brought to an end.

129. See further M. David Litwa, “I Will Become Him: Homology and Deification in the Gospel of Thomas,” JBL 133, no. 2 (2015): 427–47 at 440–1; Kathleen E. Corley, “Salome and Jesus at the Table in the Gospel of Thomas,” in Invest Your Humanity: Celebrating Marvin Meyer, ed. Julye Bidmead and Gail J. Stearns (Eugene: Pickwick, 2015), 91–105; Petersen, Zerstört, 220–2.

130. Mary Ann Beavis, “Reconsidering Mary of Bethany,” CBQ 74 (2012): 281–97.

131. See further Antti Marjanen, The Woman Jesus Loved: Mary Magdalene in the Nag Hammadi Library and Related Documents, NHMS 40 (Leiden: Brill, 1996); Petersen, Zerstört, 94–195, 296–9; Katherine Ludwig Jansen, “Maria Magdalena: Apostolorum Apostola,” in Women Preachers and Prophets through Two Millennia of Christianity, ed. Beverly Mayne Kienzle and Pamela J. Walker (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 57–98; Karen L. King, The Gospel of Mary of Magdala: Jesus and the First Woman Apostle (Salem: Polebridge, 2003); Esther A. de Boer, The Gospel of Mary: Listening to the Beloved Disciple (London: T&T Clark, 2005); Christopher Tuckett, The Gospel of Mary (Oxford: Oxford Univeristy Press, 2007).

132. See further Petersen, Zerstört, 254–8; Allie M. Ernst, Martha from the Margins: The Authority of Martha in Early Christian Tradition, VCSup 98 (Leiden: Brill, 2009), entire.

133. See further Horatio E. Lona, Die “Wahre Lehre” des Kelsos übersetzt und erklärt (Freiburg: Herder, 2005), 310–12.

134. David Brakke, The Gnostics: Myth, Ritual, and Diversity in Early Christianity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 30.

135. In addition to the Marcellinians, note Clement of Alexandria (e.g., Strom. 4.3.9.2), the unnamed γνωστικός mentioned in Strom. 2.20.117.5, the γνώστικοι referred to in Origen Cels. 5.61, the Prodicans (in Clement, Strom. 3.4.30.1), and the Naassenes (Ref. 5.6.4). Irenaeus himself did not reject “true gnosis,” which he defined as “the doctrine of the apostles” (AH 4.33.8). See further Brox, “Γνωστικοί,” 106–113; Morton Smith, “The History of the Term Gnostikos,” in The Rediscovery of Gnosticism, ed. Bentley Layton, 2 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1981), 2.796–807; Brakke, Gnostics, 33–4, 48.

136. Brakke, Gnostics, 49.

137. Smith, Guilt, 131–71.

138. Pétrement, who states no evidence for her view that Carpocrates “probably practically identified faith and knowledge” (Pace Separate God 346).

139. Eusebius, HE 4.7.10; Epiphanius, Pan. 27.3.3.

140. Meike Willing, Eusebius von Cäsarea als Häreseograph (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2008), 152–62.

141. M. David Litwa, “The So-Called Stratiotics and Phibionites: Three Notes on the ‘Gnostics’ of Epiphanius, Panarion 26,” VC 76 (2022): 73–93. https://doi.org/10.1163/15700720-bja10036.

142. On the Sethians, see Michael Williams, “Sethianism,” in Companion to Second-Century Christian “Heretics,” ed. Antti Marjanen and Petri Luomanen (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 36–50; Johanna Brankaer, “Revisiting Those Elusive Sethians,” in Shadowy Characters and Fragmentary Evidence: The Search for Early Christian Groups and Movements, ed. Joseph Verheyden et al. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017), 159–76; Litwa, Found Christianities 83–97.

143. Lipsius, Quellen, 151.

144. Price, Rituals and Power, 178; Kirsten Koonce, “ΑΓΑΛΜΑ and ΕΙΚΩΝ,” The American Journal of Philology 109, no. 1 (1988): 108–10; Thomas J. Kraus, “Alexandria, City of Knowledge: Clement on ‘Statues’ in His Protrepticus (Chapter 4),” in Alexandria: Hub of the Hellenistic World, ed. Benjamin Schliesser et al. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2021), 441–86 at 458–61, 465–7.

145. Roelof van den Broek (Gnostic Religion in Antiquity [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013]) states that the original portrait of Christ was “commissioned by Pilate” 139.

146. Justin 1 Apol. 35.9, 48.3; Tertullian, Apol. 31.24. See further the Gospel of Nicodemus (Acts of Pilate) in Elliott, Apocryphal New Testament, 164–228.

147. Lucian, Nigrinus, 2. See further Robin M. Jensen, “Visual Representations of Early Christian Teachers and of Christ as the True Philosopher,” in Christian Teachers in Second-Century Rome, ed. H. Gregory Snyder (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 60–83.

148. SHA Alexander 29.2. cf. Apuleius, who sacrificed to a statuette of Mercury on holidays (Apol. 63).

149. Snyder, “Marcellina’s Group,” 60–1.

150. Annemarie Kaufmann-Heinimann, “Religion in the House,” in A Companion to Roman Religion, ed. Jörg Rüpke (Malden: Blackwell, 2007), 188–202.

151. John Bodel, “Cicero’s Minerva, Penates, and the mother of the Lares: An Outline of Roman Domestic Religion,” in Household and Family Religion in Antiquity, ed. John Bodel and Saul M. Olyan (Malden: Wiley Blackwell, 2012), 248–75 at 255–64; Lea M. Stirling, “Pagan Statuettes in Late Antique Corinth: Sculpture from the Panayia Domus,” Hesperia 77 (2008): 89–161.

152. Litwa, Iesus Deus, 87–110.

153. Pétrement, Separate God, 349.

154. For modern identity politics distorting ancient data, see J.Z. Smith, Drudgery Divine: On the Comparison of Early Christianities and the Religions of Late Antiquity (London: School of Oriental and African Studies, 1990); Stephen D. Ricks, “The Magician as Outsider in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament,” in Ancient Magic and Ritual Power, ed. Paul Mirecki and Marvin Meyer (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 131–43 at 133–4.

155. Justin, 1 Apol. 5.3; 2 Apol. 10.4–8.

156. DL, Vita Phil. 3.44; cf. Westerink, Anonymous Prolegomena to Platonic Philosophy 6.11–13.

157. Kroymann, conforming the text to Epiphanius, printed nullas (CCSL II/2.1405), but all MSS read multas.

158. Gregory A. Smith, “How Thin is a Demon?” JECS 16, no. 4 (2008): 479–512; Troels Engberg-Pedersen, Cosmology and Self in the Apostle Paul: The Material Spirit (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); M. David Litwa, We Are Being Transformed: Deification in Paul’s Soteriology (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2012), 119–71.

159. See further Jaap Mansfeld, “Resurrection Added: The Interpretatio christiana of a Stoic Doctrine,” VC 37 (1983): 218–33.

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