Beyond Belief

by Elaine Pagels

5. For discussion, see Hans von Campenhausen, The Formation of the Christian Bible, trans. J. A. Baker, from Die Entstehung der christlichen Bibel, first edited in Tübingen, 1968 (Philadelphia and London, 1972), 80–87.

  6. Letter to Flora 3.8.

  7. Irenaeus, AH 3.11.7.

  8. For sources and discussion, see Pagels, Johannine Gospel in Gnostic Exegesis.

  9. See, for example, Irenaeus, AH 1.9.4; and the discussion by R. L. Wilken, “The Homeric Cento in Irenaeus’ Adversus Haereses 1.9.4,” Vigiliae Christianae 21 (1967), 25–33; A. Rousseau and L. Dautreleau, Irénée de Lyon contre les Héresies (Paris, 1965).

  10. For an excellent study of such teachings and interpretation, see the recent work of R. M. Grant, Heresy and Criticism. See also Robert Lamberton, Homer the Theologian: Neoplatonist Allegorical Reading and the Growth of the Epic Tradition (Berkeley, 1986).

  11. Irenaeus, AH 2.10.1–4. For a fascinating discussion of parallels between gnostic and patristic exegesis of John’s prologue, see Anne Pasquier, “Interpretation of the Prologue of John’s Gospel in Some Gnostic and Patristic Writings: A Common Tradition,” in Turner and McGuire, Nag Hammadi Library After Fifty Years, 484–498.

  12. See Perkins, “Spirit and Letter,” 307–327.

  13. John 2:13 f.

  14. Origen, Commentary on John 10.4–6; for fuller discussion and references, see Wiles, Spiritual Gospel, 96 f., and Pagels, Johannine Gospel in Gnostic Exegesis, 66–113.

  15. Valentinus 2, in Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis 2.14.3–6 (for discussion, see Markschies, Valentinus Gnosticus? 54 ff).

  16. Valentinus 7, in Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies 6.42.2.

  17. Gospel of Truth 29.9–25, in NHL 43.

  18. Opening lines of “Dover Beach.”

  19. Gospel of Truth 29.9–25, in NHL 43.

  20. Ibid., 30.16–21, in NHL 43.

  21. Ibid., 24:5–9, in NHL 41.

  22. Matthew 18:2–4; Luke 15:3–7.

  23. I Corinthians 2:7.

  24. Gospel of Truth 18:24–29, in NHL 38.

  25. Ibid., 18.29–34, in NHL 38.

  26. Ibid., 16.31–33, in NHL 37.

  27. Ibid., 42.1–10, in NHL 48.

  28. Ibid., 33.35–34.35, in NHL 44.

  29. Ibid., 32.35–33.30,

  30. I Corinthians 11:23.

  31. John 13:4–5.

  32. John 13:7–8.

  33. “Round Dance of the Cross,” in Acts of John 94.1–4. For a recently edited Greek text with French translation and notes, see E. Junod and J. P. Kästli, Acta Johannis: Praefatio-Textus, in Corpus Christianorum (Turnhout, 1983). Here I am following the recent English translation published by Barbara E. Bowe in her article “Dancing into the Divine: The Hymn of the Dance in the Acts of John,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 7:1 (1999), 83–104.

  34. “Round Dance of the Cross,” in Acts of John 94.9–95.50.

  35. Ibid., 96.1–15.

  36. Ibid., 95.27–30.

  37. Ibid., 88.12–18.

  38. Ibid., 90.1–17.

  39. Apocryphon of John 1.5–17; see the recent edition already cited, edited by Frederick Wisse and Michael Waldstein; see also the commentary on the Apocryphon of John by Karen King, forthcoming from Harvard University Press in spring 2003.

  40. Apocryphon of John, 1.18–33.

  41. Ibid., 2.9–14.

  42. Ibid., 2.3–10.

  43. The latter part of the citation follows BG 25.14–20; cf. John 1:1–4:10.

  44. For our purpose here, the precise identity of the author is not the central point—especially because it is not known. We note, however, that Christoph Markschies has persuasively challenged the traditional identification in his important article “New Research on Ptolemaeus Gnosticus,” in Zeitschrift für Antike und Christentum 4 (Berlin and New York, 2000), 249–254.

  45. Irenaeus, AH 1.8.5.

  46. Ibid., 1.9.1.

  47. Ibid., 1.9.2.

  48. Ibid., 1.18.1.

  49. Ibid., 1.9.4.

  50. Ibid., 1.10.1.

  51. The question of baptismal practice among Valentinian Christians has provoked considerable debate; for discussion and references, and for a fuller discussion of what is briefly summarized in this chapter, see Pagels, “Ritual in the Gospel of Philip.” For a different viewpoint, see Einar Thomassons’s recent studies of Valentinian practice; for example, his article “How Valentinian Is the Gospel of Philip?” in Turner and McGuire, Nag Hammadi Library After Fifty Years, 251–279; and Martha Lee Turner, “On the Coherence of the Gospel According to Philip,” 223–250. See also the excellent and detailed study by Peter Lampe, Die stadtrömischen Christen in den ersten beiden Jahrhunderten: Untersuchungen zur Sozialgeschichte (Tübingen, 1989).

  52. Cf. John 3:5; Gospel of Philip 69.4–6, in NHL 141.

  53. Gospel of Philip 64.22–26, in NHL 139.

  54. Ibid., 64.29–31, in NHL 139.

  55. Ibid., 79.25–31, in NHL 147.

  56. Ibid., 55.23–24, in NHL 147.

  57. Ibid., 71.3–15, in NHL 143.

  58. Ibid., 52.21–24, in NHL 132.

  59. Ibid., 55.30, in NHL 134.

  60. Ibid., 56.26–57.23, in NHL 134–135; for a fuller exposition of the text, see Pagels, “Ritual in the Gospel of Philip.”

  61. Gospel of Philip, 57.4–6, in NHL 134.

  62. Ibid., 67.26–27, in NHL 140.

  63. Irenaeus, AH 1.9.4; 1.10.1.

  64. Ibid., 3.15.2.

  65. Ibid., 1.10.2.

  66. Eusebius, Historia Ecclesiae 5.23–26.

  67. Irenaeus, AH 1.11.9; however, we cannot be certain that the Gospel of Truth that Irenaeus mentions here, and ascribes to “Valentinians,” is the same as the text by that name discovered at Nag Hammadi.

  68. Ibid., 1.29.4; most scholars regard the teaching Irenaeus summarizes in AH 1.29.1–4 as a paraphrase of the kind of teaching given in the Apocryphon of John.

  69. For a much fuller discussion and references, see Pagels, “Irenaeus, the ‘Canon of Truth’ and the Gospel of John.”

  70. Irenaeus, AH 1.15.2; Tertullian describes similar behavior, but he may be drawing his account from Irenaeus’s writings rather than his own encounters with such teachers, in Adversus Valentinianos 1–2; however, passages from Tertullian’s polemic, especially, for example, in chapter 4, do recall his keen ear for actual dialogue.

  71. Mark 1:7–8; Matthew 3:11; Luke 3:16.

  72. Mark 10:38.

  73. Galatians 4:5–7.

  74. Gospel of Truth 43.5–8, in NHL 49.

  75. “Round Dance of the Cross,” in Acts of John 96.2–8.

  76. Irenaeus, AH 1.21.1.

  77. Ibid., 1.21.3.

  78. Ibid.; cf. Colossians 3:3.

  79. Irenaeus, AH 1.21.3.

  80. Ibid., 1.21.4.

  81. Gospel of Thomas 50, in NHL 123.

  82. Irenaeus, AH 1.21.4.

  83. Ibid., 4.33.7.

  84. Ibid., 1.21.1.

  CHAPTER FIVE: CONSTANTINE AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

  1. Irenaeus, AH 2.13.8.

  2. Ibid., 2.13.10.

  3. Ibid., 2.13.3; 2.13.10. For discussion, see Pagels, “Irenaeus, the ‘Canon of Truth’ and the Gospel of John.”

  4. Irenaeus, AH 3.19.2.

  5. Ibid., 3.19.1.

  6. John 20:20–28; cited in Irenaeus, AH 5.7.1.

  7. Irenaeus, AH 5.1.1.

  8. Ibid.

  9. Ibid., 1.20.1.

  10. The question of canon and its introduction into Christian tradition is a difficult and disputed one. A. C. Sundberg, in “Canon Muratori: A Fourth Century List,” Harvard Theological Review 66 (1968), 1–41, offers an incisive critique of the traditional second-century dating of the Muratorian canon list, previously believed to be the earliest known list of the New Testament writings. For a careful and persuasive discussion, see Hahneman, Muratorian Fragment. For an excellent and measured review of the question, see Harold Gamble, The New Testament Canon: Its Making and Meaning (Minneapolis,
1985); and “The New Testament Canon: Recent Research and the Status Quaestionis,” a forthcoming article which he kindly allowed me to read in manuscript. For an outstanding introduction to issues in the formation of the New Testament, see David E. Aune, The New Testament in Its Literary Environment (Philadelphia, 1987). See also the incisive study by Franz Stuhlhofer, Der Gebrauch der Bibel von Jesus bis Euseb: Eine stätistische Untersuchung zur Kanonsgeschichte (Wuppertal, 1988); also John Barton, People of the Book? The Authority of the Bible in Christianity (Louisville, Ky., 1989).

  11. Irenaeus, AH 1.9.4. For discussion, see the classic discussion of “canon” as baptismal confession by Adolf von Harnack, in History of Dogma, volume I, chapter 3; also the critique by R. Seeberg in Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte I–II (Basel, 1953–54), as well as the incisive discussion by D. van den Eynde, “Les Normes de l'Enseignement Chrétien dans la littérature patristique des trois premiers siècles,” in J. Duculot, ed., Ecriture et Tradition, Catholic University of Louvain, Dissertation Series 2.25 (Paris, 1933), 281–313; also L. William Countryman, “Tertullian and the Regula Fidei,” The Second Century 2 (1982), 201–227.

  12. Irenaeus, AH 3.11.7.

  13. Scholars have debated the transmission history of John’s gospel in sources preceding Irenaeus; see, for example, the discussion in Koester, Ancient Christian Gospels, 240–267. In an earlier discussion, Professor Koester apparently agreed with many others that Justin had alluded to John or Johannine tradition when he apparently alluded to John 3:5 in his description of baptism (I Apology 61). But in his more recent book, Koester evaluates Justin’s version of this saying as an early, independently transmitted tradition (361). On manuscript evidence for the Johannine gospel in Egypt, see Colin H. Roberts, Manuscript, Society, and Belief in Early Christian Egypt (London, 1979). T. E. Pollard, Johannine Christology and the Early Church, says that Theophilus of Antioch is the first Christian writer to attribute the fourth gospel to “John,” and “to quote explicitly from the fourth gospel” (40). See also the important studies by J. N. Sanders, The Fourth Gospel in the Early Church (Cambridge, 1943), and Maurice F. Wiles, Spiritual Gospel.

  14. See the later recensions of Ignatius’s letters for apparent insertions of Johannine material.

  15. For references, see Chapter 3, note 40; also Trevett, Montanism, 139–140; see also Charles H. Cosgrove, “Justin Martyr and the Emerging Christian Community,” Vigiliae Christianae 36 (1982), 209–232.

  16. Irenaeus writes that he had heard from Polycarp that John, “the disciple of the Lord,” was the archenemy of Cerinthus, whom, he said, John had pronounced “the firstborn of Satan” (AH 3.3.4).

  17. For recent discussion, see, for example, T. Baarda, “Diaphonia—Symphonia: Factors in the Harmonization of the Gospels, Especially in the Diatessaron of Tatian,” in W. L. Peterson, ed., Gospel Traditions in the Second Century: Origins, Recensions, Text, and Transmission (Notre Dame, 1989), 133–154; and the recent study by W. L. Peterson, Tatian’s Diatessaron: Its Creation, Dissemination, Significance, and History in Scholarship (Leiden, 1994).

  18. Irenaeus, AH 3.11.1; 3.3.4; Irenaeus indicates that Ptolemy’s disciples agree (1.8.5).

  19. Ibid., 3.11.8–9. As T. C. Skeat writes in “Irenaeus and the Four-Gospel Canon,” Novum Testamentum 34 (1992), 194: “Every study of the Canon of the Four Gospels begins, and rightly begins, with the famous passage in which Irenaeus, writing about the year 185, seeks to defend the Canon by finding a mystical significance in the number four.”

  20. Irenaeus, AH 3.11.8–9.

  21. Irenaeus quotes a written commentary on the Johannine Prologue in 1.8.5. Although he suggests that what follows is the teaching of Valentinus’s disciple Ptolemy, it is more likely a writing by one of Ptolemy’s disciples; see Markschies, “New Research on Ptolemaeus Gnosticus,” 249–254. See also Pasquier, “Interpretation of the Prologue,” 484–498.

  22. Irenaeus, AH 1.9.2–3.

  23. Thanks to Paula Fredriksen for reminding me that this inference is not what Irenaeus, obviously influenced by Middle Platonic thinking, would have been likely to understand.

  24. For fuller discussion of the prologue translations, see Pagels, “Exegesis of Genesis 1,” 208–209, and Dodd, Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel, 268–269. Many English translations, such as, for example the Revised Standard Version, edited by Herbert G. May and Bruce M. Metzger, not only capitalize the term logos (word) but also translate the pronouns in 1:7–10 as “he,” as if they referred to Jesus Christ, instead of indicating that the Greek can be read as neuter or masculine, depending on whether one reads the pronouns’ antecedent as phos (“light,” neuter in Greek) or logos (“word,” masculine in Greek). Even the reader who goes back to the Greek original may find, as, for example, in the edition by Nestle-Aland, that the Greek text actually capitalizes the term logos, which, in the early manuscripts, would have been indistinguishable from the rest of the text.

  25. Irenaeus, AH 1.22.1.

  26. Ibid., 4.20.1–10.

  27. Ibid., 4.20.10–11.

  28. Ibid., 5.15.2.

  29. Ibid., 3.11.8. “Matthew, too, relates [Christ’s] human generation, saying (Matthew 1:1) . . .”

  30. Ibid. “The gospel according to Luke . . . takes up his priestly character.”

  31. Ibid. “Mark, on the other hand, begins with the prophetic spirit descending from on high” (cf. Mark 1:1).

  32. Ibid., 3.11.1.

  33. Ibid., 4.7.4.

  34. Ibid., 4.18.4.

  35. Ibid., 17.4–6.

  36. Ibid., 4.18.1–4.

  37. A. S. Jacobs, “The Disorder of Books: Priscillian’s Canonical Defense of Apocrypha,” Harvard Theological Review 93:2 (2000), 135–159; see also A. Reed, “Apocrypha, ‘Outside Books,’ and Pseudepigrapha: Ancient Categories and Modern Perceptions of Parabiblical Literature,” paper presented at the Philadelphia Seminar on Christian Origins: Parabiblical Literature, October 10, 2002.

  38. Irenaeus, AH 4.36.2–4.

  39. Ibid., 5.2.1–2.

  40. Ibid., 5.21–34.

  41. Ibid., 1, Praefatio.

  42. See the recent and detailed study by Christoph Markschies, Valentinus Gnosticus?; also Lampe, Die stadtrömischen Christen in den ersten beiden Jahrhunderten, 251–268.

  43. See, for example, Judith Kovacs, “Echoes of Valentinian Exegesis in Clement of Alexander and Origen,” paper given at Pisa, August 2000, forthcoming in Origeniana Octava.

  44. Tertullian, Prescription Against Heretics 3.

  45. For an incisive and intriguing discussion of correlated fourth-century phenomena, see David Brakke, Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism (Oxford and New York, 1995).

  46. Tertullian, Against the Valentinians 4.

  47. Tertullian, Prescription Against Heretics 41.

  48. Irenaeus, AH 3.15.2.

  49. Exodus 9:35; Irenaeus, AH 4.28.3–30.

  50. Genesis 19:33–35; Irenaeus, AH 4.31.1–3.

  51. William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (Cambridge, Mass., 1985).

  52. John 4:46–53.

  53. John 4:11–23; for the fragments that remain from Heracleon’s commentary, see Werner Foerster, Gnosis, Die Fragments Heracleons (Zürich, 1971), 63–86. For discussion of these fragments, see Pagels, Johannine Gospel in Gnostic Exegesis; and more recently the study by J. M. Poffet, La méthode exégétique d'Héracléon et d'Origène (Fribourg, 1985).

  54. John 4:16.

  55. Heracleon, Fragment 19, in Origen’s Commentary on John 13.15.

  56. John 4:23, see Heracleon, Fragments 23–25, in Origen, Commentary on John 13.19. For an incisive discussion of “gnostic” views of worship, see Klaus Koschorke, Die Polemik der Gnostiker gegen das kirchliche Christentum (Leiden, 1978), especially 142–147.

  57. See the edition and translation by Frederick Wisse and Michael Waldstein, Apocryphon of John: Synopsis of Nag Hammadi Codices II.1; III, 1; and IV.1, with BG 8502, 2, also the fascinating essay by Waldstein, “The Primal Triad in th
e Apocryphon of John,” in Turner and McGuire, Nag Hammadi Library After Fifty Years, 154–187, and the commentary forthcoming by Karen King from Harvard University Press.

  58. Apocryphon of John 20.15–25, in NHL 110.

  59. For this version of the story, see On the Origin of the World, 108–118, in NHL 167–174.

  60. Apocryphon of John 26.14–15, in NHL 113.

  61. Ibid., 26.15–19, in NHL 113.

  62. I Corinthians 13:12.

  63. Apocryphon of John 30.2–4, in NHL 115.

  64. Ibid., 11.20–21, in NHL 105.

  65. Genesis 3:16–19.

  66. Genesis 3:16 b.

  67. Genesis 3:22–24.

  68. Apocryphon of John 28.5–30.11, in NHL 114–115.

  69. Irenaeus, AH 4.19.2.

  70. Eusebius, Vita Constantinae 1.26–29.

  71. Eusebius, Historia Ecclesiae 10.6.

  72. Ibid., 10.5.15–17.

  73. For a detailed account, see Timothy D. Barnes, Constantine and Eusebius (Cambridge and London, 1981), especially 208–227.

  74. Eusebius, Historia Ecclesiae 10.7.

  75. Codex Theodosius 19.5.1.

  76. For a forthcoming article that suggests Constantine was not the emperor who built the first basilica of St. Peter on the Vatican (as tradition holds), see Glen Bowersock, in the supplement to Antiquite Tardive in honor of Lellia Cracco Ruggini, and also in a forthcoming Cambridge University Press volume on the Vatican, edited by William Tronzo.

  77. Eusebius, Vita Constantinae 2.45–46. See Ramsay MacMullen, Christianizing the Roman Empire, A.D. 100–400 (New Haven and London, 1884), 43–59; also Barnes, Constantine and Eusebius, especially 224–260.

  78. On the subsidies of grain, see M. J. Hollerich, “The Alexandrian Bishops and the Grain Trade: Ecclesiastical Commerce in Late Roman Egypt,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 25 (1982), 187–207.

  79. Barnes, Constantine and Eusebius, 252.

  80. Ibid., 252; Codex Theodosius, 16.8.6; 16.8.1.

  81. The sketch presented here is owed primarily to the careful historiography of Timothy D. Barnes, who has published several fine histories of this period. Besides his book Constantine and Eusebius, see his more recent Athanasius and Constantius: Theology and Politics in the Constantinian Empire (Cambridge and London, 1993). An excellent article that presents an overview of these developments is Glen W. Bowersock, “From Emperor to Bishop: The Self-Conscious Transformation of Political Power in the Fourth Century A.D.,” Classical Philology 81 (1986), 298–302; see also the important work of Peter Brown, including Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire (Madison, Wis., 1992), and Authority and the Sacred: Aspects of the Christianisation of the Roman World (Cambridge, 1995); Susannah Elm, Virgins of God: The Making of Asceticism in Late Antiquity (Oxford and New York, 1992); and David Brakke, Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism.