9th post in the series by Roger Parvus. The complete series is archived here.
In the letters of Peregrinus there are some passages that concern his gospel. If, as I have proposed, he was an Apellean Christian, we can expect to find here too some rough-edged and clumsy corrections by his proto-Catholic editor/interpolator.
TO THE PHILADELPHIANS 8:2 – 9:2
8:2. “But I exhort you to do nothing in a spirit of faction—instead, in accordance with the teachings of Christ. For I heard some saying, ‘If I do not find [in] the archives in the gospel I do not believe.’ And when I said to them, ‘It is written,’ they responded, ‘That is what is in question.’ But my archives are Jesus Christ; the inviolable archives are his cross, his death, his resurrection, and the faith which is through him. It is by these that I desire to be justified, with the help of your prayers. [9:1. The priests are good, but better is the high priest who has been entrusted with the holy of holies; he alone has been entrusted with the secrets of God. He is himself the door of the Father, through which enter in Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and the prophets and the apostles and the church. All these combine in the unity of God. 9:2. Nevertheless] The gospel has a distinction all its own, namely the appearing of the Savior, our Lord Jesus Christ, his suffering and his resurrection. [For the beloved prophets announced him, but the Gospel is the completion of imperishability. All these things are good, if you believe with love.”]
The above passage begins by relating part of an exchange the prisoner had with his Judaizing opponents. There is almost universal agreement that the “archives” in the second sentence refers to the Old Testament. And most scholars are in agreement as to the general sense of the verse: the Judaizers were Christians but insisted that the gospel meet some Old Testament-related requirement of theirs. But beyond that, there has been much debate about the punctuation and precise interpretation of the verse. The biggest problem is that at face value it seems to say that if the Judaizers’ requirement is not met they do not believe in the gospel. It seems incredible that Christians would not believe in the gospel. So, to avoid such a radical interpretation, a number of alterations have been proposed. Some have wanted to simply delete the words “in the gospel” as a later gloss. Others, to arrive at the same result by another route, argue that the verse in question contains implied words that are lost in a literal translation. William Schoedel for example, proposes that “the object (‘it’) should be supplied in the second part of the sentence just as it is in the first. And something like the verb ‘to be’ (or ‘to be found’) can also easily be supplied” (“Ignatius of Antioch,” pp. 207-8). Thus Schoedel’s translation is: “If I do not find (it) in the archives, I do not believe (it to be) in the gospel.” In this way the Judaizers are made to reject only those parts of the gospel that are not found in the Old Testament. Michael Goulder, for one, considers that solution “implausible” (“Ignatius’ ‘Docetists’” in “Vigiliae Christianae” 53, p. 17, n. 4), but to Schoedel it is definitely preferable to accepting at face value the statement that the Judaizing Christians do not believe in the gospel. He writes:
“Conceivably a group of Christians could have declared rhetorically their unwillingness to believe the gospel unless it was backed up by Scripture simply to make clear the importance of Scripture to them. But then why would Ignatius have replied by saying, ‘It is written’? And why would they have challenged him on that as if to suggest that the truth of the gospel itself was in doubt?” (“Ignatius of Antioch,” p. 207, n. 3)
My theory that the author of the letters was an Apellean can provide plausible answers to Schoedel’s questions. As I explained in my 6th post, the people who are stigmatized as ‘Judaizers’ in the letters are in fact proto-Catholics. Peregrinus calls them Judaizers on account of their full use of the Old Testament to support their Christianity. Their declaration of unwillingness to accept a gospel unless it is backed up by the Old Testament is not just “rhetorical.”
The reply—“I said to them, ‘It is written’”—is puzzling to Schoedel because it shows that the author of the letters can in fact appeal to the Old Testament after all to back up his gospel. So why then were the Judaizers contesting it? And why were they not satisfied with his reply? If the author of the letters is an Apellean these problems vanish, for Apelleans rejected most but not all of the Old Testament. The debate, then, between Peregrinus and the proto-Catholic Judaizers would be about whether the Apellean gospel was sufficiently based on the Old Testament.
Only twice in the letters does Peregrinus quote the Old Testament and both times the quote is from the book of Proverbs (Prov. 3:34 quoted by IgnEph 5,3; Prov. 18:17 quoted by IgnMag. 12,10). And his gospel, as I have pointed out in previous posts, displays a number of Johannine affinities. That is of interest because some scholars hold that the Fourth Gospel relies more on the wisdom literature of the Old Testament than on the Law and Prophets. And the Fourth Gospel’s possession of some mildly gnostic features is in many ways compatible with the mild gnosticism of Apelles’ doctrine. There are, then, at least a few reasons to think that the Apellean gospel was Johannine-like, and it is known that some second-century proto-Catholics did not accept the Fourth Gospel. But the fact remains that the only Old Testament book quoted by Peregrinus is the book of Proverbs. If the Apellean gospel’s sole or even primary connection to the Old Testament was the book of Proverbs, would that have been enough to satisfy the proto-Catholics? And would an Apellean interpretation of Proverbs have been acceptable to them? The response in IgnPhil. 8:2 is appropriate: “That is what is in question;” which words—in literal translation of the Greek—are “it lies before us,’ and are paraphrased by Schoedel as: “that deserves investigation.”
There is no question that the proto-Catholics used the book of Proverbs to support their gospel. Justin, in his “Dialogue with Trypho,” quotes extensively from chapter eight of the book to prove that “God begat before all creatures a Beginning, a certain rational power proceeding from himself, who is called by the Holy Spirit, now the Glory of the Lord, now the Son, again Wisdom, again an Angel, then God, and then Lord and Logos…” (ch. 61). But Apelleans could have involved the Son only in the creation of the higher world. The lower world was created by their Glorious Angel, and his attempt to model it on the higher world failed miserably. So how could the proto-Catholics have accepted any gospel that was based on an Apellean interpretation of Proverbs? Again, “that is what is in question” (IgnPhil. 8:2).
Frustrated with that proto-Catholic response, Peregrinus impetuously dismisses their absurd obsession with the Old Testament by saying, “my archives are Jesus Christ; the inviolable archives are his cross, his death, his resurrection, and the faith which is through him. It is by these that I desire to be justified, with the help of your prayers.” He thus makes clear that his gospel doesn’t need the backing of the Old Testament for it “has a distinction all its own, namely the appearing of the Savior, our Lord Jesus Christ, his suffering and his resurrection.”
The proto-Catholic editor/interpolator of the letters could not allow Peregrinus’ brush-off of the archives to stand uncorrected. Once again he makes an awkward insertion (the first bracketed and bolded section) that brings helter-skelter into the letter the priests of the Old Testament, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and the prophets. There is no rhyme or reason to his particular choices. He could just as easily have opted for Noah, Moses and David. The point was to bring in some representatives of the Old Testament in order to temper Peregrinus’ dismissal of it. The interpolator sets his Old Testament representatives alongside the apostles and the rest of the church and makes them all part of one happy family: “All these combine in the unity of God… All these things are good, if you believe with love.” Notice, however, that he seems to have slipped up in allowing the “appearing” (Greek: parousia) of the Savior to remain in the text. The Apellean Jesus was not born into this world. He appeared in it, having made a human body for himself in the course of his descent. “This man (Apelles) having first fallen in the flesh from the principles of Marcion into the company of women, and afterwards shipwrecked himself in the spirit on the virgin Philumena, proceeded from that time to preach that the body of Christ was of solid flesh, but without having been born” (Tertullian, “On the Flesh of Christ,” 6). The Apellean gospel, again like the Johannine one, apparently did not have a nativity section.
A bit earlier in the letter to the Philadelphians there is another passage that required intervention by the proto-Catholic editor/interpolator:
TO THE PHILADELPHIANS 5:1 – 6:2
5:1. “Your prayer will perfect me, that I may attain God by the lot I have been mercifully granted. I take refuge in the gospel as in the flesh of Jesus, and in the apostle[s] as the presbytery of the church. [5:2. And we also love the prophets, because they too proclaimed the gospel, and hoped in him and waited for him; and by believing in him they were saved, being united with Jesus Christ. Worthy of love and worthy of admiration, they are saints, attested by Jesus Christ and enrolled in the gospel of our common hope.] 6:1. But if anyone in his interpretation expounds Judaism to you, do not listen to him. For it is better to hear Christianity from one who is circumcised than to hear Judaism from someone who is uncircumcised. But I look on both of them, if they do not speak of Jesus Christ, as monuments and tombstones which bear nothing more than the names of men. 6:2. Flee therefore the evil wiles and snares of the ruler of this age, lest being wearied by his scheming you grow weak in love. But assemble together, all of you, with an undivided heart.”
In this passage we see again a suspicious section on the prophets. The prisoner says he takes refuge in the gospel and apostle[s] but then immediately and inexplicably launches into extensive praise of the prophets. Nowhere in the letters is he anywhere near as effusive about the apostles. And nowhere in the letters is there a single quote from the supposedly saintly and Christian Old Testament prophets. Suspicious too is how in the section about the prophets there is a switch over to the first person plural. Peregrinus had been speaking about himself, using the singular, and the recourse he has to the gospel and apostle[s]. But then a switch occurs to “we” when the section that praises the prophets is introduced: “And we also love the prophets…”
As I see it, this passage shows the editor/interpolator again at work correcting a perceived deficiency in the Apellean beliefs held by the author of the letter. Apelles, when he was affiliated with Marcion, would have had a canon that consisted of Gospel and Apostle. When he broke with Marcion he replaced the ‘Gospel’ section with a new gospel of his own, but he likely still retained the basic twofold division of his Christian authorities. I think it is that arrangement that comes through in IgnPhil.5:1: “I take refuge in the GOSPEL as in the flesh of Jesus, and in the APOSTLE[s] as the presbytery of the church” (my emphases). The proto-Catholic editor/interpolator changed this twofold division in favor of an arrangement that covered all of Scripture. The change entailed adding the Prophets (often used as shorthand for the Old Testament) and replacing the singular ‘Apostle’ with the plural ‘Apostles.’ This is the kind of rough proto-Catholic canon that is present, for example, in Irenaeus: “the prophets… the Lord (i.e. Gospel)… the apostles” (“Against Heresies,” 1,8,1,); and “the Lord himself, the apostles, and the prophets”(“Against Heresies,” 3,17,4). And in Hippolytus: “the prophets, the Lord, and the apostles” (“Commentary on Daniel,” 4,49).
And note that, after the section praising the prophets, Peregrinus issues a warning about anyone who “in his interpretation expounds Judaism,” even if that interpretation is made by “someone who is uncircumcised.” If we lift the bold bracketed section from the passage we can see the train of thought that was originally present: Peregrinus expressed the comfort he found in the Gospel and Apostle but warned his readers not to listen to anyone who would interpret those writings in a Judaizing manner. In other words, he was putting his readers on guard against the proto-Catholic versions of the gospel and Paul’s writings. And that is why, too, he makes mention here of the “evil wiles and snares of the ruler of this age.” For Apelleans it was the ruler of evil who inspired the Law and the Prophets that proto-Catholics absurdly continued to respect.
Another interesting passage that deals with the Apellean gospel is in the letter to the Smyrneans. Peregrinus appeals to the gospel for support against his docetic opponents:
TO THE SMYRNEANS 3:1-3
“For I know and believe that even after his resurrection he was in the flesh. And when he came to those who were with Peter, he said to them, ‘Take hold of me, touch me and see that I am not a bodiless phantom.’ And immediately they touched him and believed, being intermingled with his flesh and his spirit. Because of that they despised death, and were found to rise above death. Moreover, after his resurrection he ate and drank with them as a being of flesh, even though spiritually he was united with the Father.”
Some scholars hold that the episodes related by this passage are drawn from oral tradition, not from a written gospel. Why? Because in the passage the author doesn’t anywhere say that he is appealing to a gospel. To which I respond: Scholars universally agree that the author of the so-called Ignatians knew and used at least some of the Pauline letters, yet when Peregrinus uses them he doesn’t give the slightest tipoff that he is doing so. That is to say, if the Paulines were not extant, we would not even be aware of his many allusions to them. So why should anyone expect him to use his Gospel any differently than he uses his Apostle? If in the letters we never find “as Paul says…,” or “heed these words of the Apostle…,” or “as we read in the letter to so-and-so….,” why should we expect to find words like “as is written in the gospel?”
Another argument sometimes used by scholars who contend that the Smyrnean passage is not based on a written gospel is that it contains no clear demarcation of where the source material ends and where the words of the author of the letter begin. If Peregrinus was using a written gospel, wouldn’t he have been careful to clearly distinguish his words from the words of his text? In the Smyrnean passage, as Schoedel points out, the words “being intermingled with his flesh and spirit” may very be the prisoner’s. (“Ignatius of Antioch,” p. 227). In response I would point out that mixing of that kind is something Peregrinus routinely does when he makes his borrowings from the Paulines. His method is to use the Paul’s letters allusively, incorporating Pauline words, phrases, and expressions in his own writing to express his own ideas. So again, why should we expect him to treat his Apellean gospel any differently?
The biggest obstacle preventing scholars from recognizing that the Smyrnean passage draws from a written source is that it cannot be matched up exactly with any of the extant ones. Origen says it comes from the “Doctrina Petri,” but there is no way to confirm his claim. Jerome says it comes from the Gospel according to the Hebrews, but again there is no way to confirm it. Most of the scholars who see a written gospel behind the passage think it comes either from Luke’s Gospel or an apocryphal one. My own admittedly amateur opinion is that it comes from Apelles’ Gospel. I too cannot prove my claim because Apelles’ Gospel—at least in its original form—is not extant. But I would argue that it was clearly for an anti-docetic purpose that Peregrinus brought forward Jesus’ denial of being a “bodiless phantom,’ and the early record is clear that Apelles was deliberately anti-docetic. He taught that Jesus “showed them (his disciples) the prints of the nails and the wound in his side, desirous of persuading them that he was in truth no phantom, but was present in the flesh” (Hippolytus, “The Refutation of All Heresies,” 7,26). And the peculiar comment that Peregrinus makes—that Jesus was in the flesh “even after the resurrection”—should be noted. That comment does not have Marcionites in view, for they denied that Christ was ever in the flesh at all. It seems rather to have proto-Catholics in view, who held that Christ rose from the dead with a glorified body. There would have been no place in the Apellean system for a glorified body. Jesus’ body was already made of top-of-the-line, grade A elements borrowed from the higher regions. And in the Apellean system men are essentially bodiless souls: “He (Apelles) teaches the salvation of souls alone” (Pseudo-Tertullian, “Against All Heresies,” 6). “He claimed that there is no resurrection of the dead.” (Epiphanius, “Panarion,” 44,4,1). So by saying that Jesus was in the flesh “even after the resurrection” Peregrinus is saying that he was in the same body that he was crucified in, as evidenced by the continued presence of his wounds. He had presumably cleaned up a bit, but his flesh was the same and non-glorified. And it was that same flesh that he disposed of right before his ascension.
I can only speculate as to why Peregrinus, even though he had the highest regard for Paul (IgnEph. 12:2), did not feel the need to directly appeal to the apostle’s writings for support of anything he says in his own letters. And why he so rarely appealed to the gospel. Some propose that it was because he was a prisoner-in-transit and did not have his books with him. It may be too that the Apellean Gospel was still a work-in-progress. Based as it was on the revelations of Philumena, I expect it was added to and modified in accordance with her ongoing revelations. But my gut feeling is that Peregrinus’ almost pathological self-importance is the real reason he didn’t directly appeal to his Gospel and Apostle more frequently. He enjoyed the attention that his arrest brought him, and the moral authority it conferred on him in the eyes of his co-religionists: “Am I not able to write to you of heavenly things? But I fear that I may harm you who are infants. Bear with me, then, lest you be choked by what you are unable to swallow.…I am in chains and am able to understand heavenly things, the angelic locations, the formations of the archons, things visible and invisible…” (IgnTral. 5:1-1). His letters were a kind of last will and testament for him and he wanted to fill them with advice and admonitions of his own, not of someone else. And since he was acknowledged as a prophet by his brethren, he had no real need to resort to written authorities. He had a direct line to God: “In my second treatise that I intend to write you, I will continue this exposition which I began of the divine plan regarding the new man, Jesus Christ, which consists in faith in him and love for him, in his passion and resurrection, especially if the Lord makes any revelation to me” (IgnEph. 20:1-2). “The Spirit is not deceived since it is from God. For it knows whence it comes and whither it goes, and it exposes the things which are hidden. I cried out when I was among you, I spoke with a loud voice, with the voice of God… he is my witness whose prisoner I am , that I learned it not from human flesh. But it was the Spirit who kept preaching in these words: ‘Do nothing without the bishop. Keep your flesh as a shrine of God. Love union. Flee divisions. Become followers of Jesus Christ as he was also of the Father.” (IgnPhil. 3:1-1, my emphases). I think Lucian was correct in his assessment of Peregrinus, and that both as a Christian and as a Cynic he was the kind of person who preferred to bestow his own words of wisdom rather than those of others.
I’ll end this post with one additional and passing observation on the Smyrnean passage. William Schoedel may be right that it contains some words that are the prisoner’s contribution. The ones that I find interesting are: “Because of that they despised death…” The despising of death was apparently a theme that was ever on the mind of Peregrinus. We see it here during his Christian period. And I suspect he continued to harp on that theme up until the day he lept to his death as Cynic: “He alleges, however, that he is doing it for the sake of his fellow men, that he may teach them to despise death…” (TDOP 23, Harmon). And: “I wish, said he, to benefit mankind by showing them the way in which one should despise death” (TDOP 33, Harmon).
Roger Parvus
Roger Parvus
Latest posts by Roger Parvus (see all)
- A Simonian Origin for Christianity? — A few more thoughts - 2023-03-08 00:03:04 GMT+0000
- Revising the Series “A Simonian Origin for Christianity”, Part 4 / Conclusion – Historical Jesus? - 2019-03-07 00:35:19 GMT+0000
- Revising the Series “A Simonian Origin for Christianity”, Part 3 - 2019-03-06 23:57:30 GMT+0000
If you enjoyed this post, please consider donating to Vridar. Thanks!
During the second half of the first century, the writing of gospel stories flourished. Young Christians wrote fictional stories about what would have happened if Jesus Christ would have descended to Earth (not just to the Firmament) and interacted with human beings there. During that period when these stories were being written and shared, they were understood by everyone in the Christian community to be fictions.
Then, perhaps at about the beginning of the second century, some Christians began to claim that some of these gospel stories told actual events. Jesus Christ really had descended to Earth and interacted with human beings.
Then,about a decade later, a dissident Christian named Marcion assembled letters of Paul as the basis for Marcion’s own interpretation of Christianity. Marcion, like Paul, believed that Jesus Christ never became a human being and never descended to Earth. Jesus Christ remained essentially a spirit and went through a crucifixion, death, burial and resurrection on the Firmament.
One of Marcion’s followers was Peregrinus, who liked Marcion’s idea of creating a written canon composed of old Christian documents. Eventually, however, Peregrinus converted to the beliefs that Jesus Christ had become a human being and had descended to Earth and that some of the gospel stories were true. Peregrinus moved to Antioch and became involved in a group of Christians who were trying to assemble all the written gospel stories and to select those that were true and thus to establish a canon for their own interpretation of Christianity. Peregrinus, because of his own previous experience helping Marcion in a similar effort, soon became a prominent member of this group in Antioch.
The effort to agree on which gospels were true turned out to be contentious. The dispute became violent, and Peregrinus fled from Antioch. He was arrested and while he was being brought back to Antioch he wrote the letters that are the subject of this series of articles by Roger Parvus.
Now that Parvus has proven the correct authorship, time-frame and circumstances of the letters, we can understand the contents that shed light on the Antioch group that was trying to determine which gospel stories were true and trying to assemble them into a written canon for their own new interpretation of Christianity.
The group was divided into several factions.
One faction, the “Judaizers”, argued for depending mainly on a criterion that any gospel selected for the canon had to harmonize with ancient Jewish scriptures. As Peregrinus characterized their argument: “If the ancient scriptures are not found in a gospel, then that gospel is not credible” for inclusion into the new canon.
Another faction, the Apelleans, to which Peregrinus belonged, depended mainly on a criterion that any gospel selected for the canon had to harmonize with the mystical teachings that had been received from Peter and the other first Christians who had experienced the mystical vision of Jesus’s passion on the Firmament. As Peregrinus characterized his own faction’s argument: “If the significance of Jesus Christ’s mystical crucifixion and resurrection on the Firmament is not found in a gospel, then that gospel is not credible” for inclusion in the new canon.
One particular issue that divided the two factions was a prophecy about a future cosmic war. Some of the Apelleans believed that at some future time, Jesus Christ was descend from the Heavens back down to the Firmament, where he would fight a battle against the various beings there. Jesus Christ would summon some of the Christians on the Earth to rise up onto the Firmament to fight on his side in that battle. Then the survivors of that battle would ascend up into the Heavens, while the Firmament and the Earth would be destroyed. On Heaven’s Seventh Level there is a temple, where Jesus Christ forevermore would serve as the High Priest and the surviving Christians would serve as the priests.
Peregrinus associated himself with that particular belief, as indicated when he wrote as follows: “The priests [human Christians selected for eternal life] are good, but better is the High Priest [Jesus Christ] who has been entrusted with the Holy of Holies (the Temple on Heaven’s Seventh Level]. He alone [Jesus Christ] has been entrusted with the secrets of God. He is himself the door of the Father, through which enter in Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and the prophets and the apostles and the church. All these combine in the unity of God.”
The expression “door of the Father” refers to one role that Jesus Christ played on the Firmament. At the beginning of time, Jesus Christ had created the Firmament such that it was equipped with gates through which angels could descend down to the Earth and through which some human beings could ascend up onto the Firmament and sometimes further up into the Heavens.
A couple decades after Peregrinus wrote his letters, the Judaizers completed their own selection of true gospels and the assembly of that selection into one long, coherent work that we now know as The Gospel According to Matthew. This work is full of assertions that its events happened in fulfillment of ancient Jewish scriptures. When we read these assertions today, we understand them to be mainly proofs that the events happened because God planned and caused the events for a divine scheme of history.
However, there is another way to understand all those assertions in Matthew. Such an assertion indicates the criterion that the Judaizers used for determining that a particular gospel was credible for inclusion into a canon of historically true gospels. For example, there apparently was a gospel story about Jesus Christ descending to Earth through the means of being born of a virgin woman. Was this a gospel story that was a fiction, or a gospel story that was a true event? We can imagine the group in Antioch arguing about this point. The Judaizer faction argued that this gospel story was true, because it contained the element that such a birth happened in fulfillment of an ancient Jewish prophecy. The Judaizers argued: “We find the scripture in this gospel, and so we believe it”. And so the Judaizers included this particular gospel into their Gospel According to Matthew, and they included the ancient prophecy as justification for that inclusion.
What argument did the Apelleans make against that particular inclusion? I speculate that the Apelleans argued that Jesus Christ was based mostly on the Firmament and that his descent to Earth was a relatively brief excursion — or a series of brief excursions. After all, Jesus Christ controlled the Firmament’s gates, and he easily could descend from the Firmament through a gate down to Earth. Jesus Christ did not have to be born as a human infant and grow to human adulthood. Rather,Jesus could simply descend to Earth and appear instantly as a human adult just for the human interactions he would accomplish. For the Apelleans, this explanation fit better with the original Christian mystical teachings that Jesus’s mission was accomplished mainly on the Firmament.
When the Apelleans eventually completed their own long, coherent work, which we know as The Gospel According to John, it omits any stories about Jesus being born as a human being or growing to adulthood as a human being. Rather, he appeared instantaneously as an adult at a location where immediately he would be baptized by John the Baptist.
In general, John is not filled so much with assertions about fulfilments of ancient prophecies as Matthew is filled with them. Instead, John is filled with mystical poems that apparently had originated among the very first Christians, more than a century previously. These poems were the criteria for selecting the gospels that the Apelleans believed to be true and therefore included in their own canon.