Valens/Valentinus, Flora/Florinus and Marcus/Marcianus

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
Secret Alias
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Re: Valens/Valentinus, Flora/Florinus and Marcus/Marcianus

Post by Secret Alias »

You can see at once where Irenaeus is citing an original report written by someone else and where he interjects his own testimony. The tail end of the original report:
... Now, as soon as the Mother hears these words, she puts the Homeric helmet of Pluto upon them, so that they may invisibly escape the judge. And then she immediately catches them up, conducts them into the bridal chamber, and hands them over to their consorts.

Such are the words and deeds by which, in our own district of the Rhone (Ῥοδανουσίας) they have deluded many women, who have their consciences seared as with a hot iron. Some of them, indeed, make a public confession of their sins; but others of them are ashamed to do this, and in a tacit kind of way, despairing of [attaining to] the life of God, have, some of them, apostatized altogether; while others hesitate between the two courses, and incur that which is implied in the proverb, "neither without nor within;" possessing this as the fruit from the seed of the children of knowledge.
Last edited by Secret Alias on Thu Jun 22, 2017 9:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
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Re: Valens/Valentinus, Flora/Florinus and Marcus/Marcianus

Post by Secret Alias »

Ῥοδανουσίας. Irenaeus speaks of the region around Lyons in a very strange construction. It is preserved as Ῥοδανουσία from Ροδανός. The genitive is Ροδανού so the Rhegium dialect would have constructed the adjective as Ῥοδανουσία. This is big.

So we have our first tangible proof that Μαρκώσιοι was from Irenaeus's report. He spoke in a dialect associated with Rhegium and the Greek colonies in southern Italy. That's why he called those of Mark Μαρκώσιοι and now the region of the Rhone Ῥοδανουσία.
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
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Re: Valens/Valentinus, Flora/Florinus and Marcus/Marcianus

Post by Secret Alias »

Also it should be noted that Οὐαλεντῖνός could be a representation of the southern Italian tendency to construct adjectives with the suffix τῖνος https://books.google.com/books?id=XfROA ... um&f=false. Polycarp condemned a prominent Valens http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0136.htm
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
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John T
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Re: Valens/Valentinus, Flora/Florinus and Marcus/Marcianus

Post by John T »

@ Secret Alias,

I'm still stupid.

I have tried to understand what your basic beef is regarding Marcion.

However, you drill so deep and your insight is so profound I can't understand what it is you are trying to prove.

My basic understanding is; the Ante-Nicene fathers labeled Marcion a heretic for his Gnostic views.

So, are you saying Marcion never existed or are you saying he was not a Gnostic?


Sincerely,

John T
"It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into."...Jonathan Swift
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Re: Valens/Valentinus, Flora/Florinus and Marcus/Marcianus

Post by Secret Alias »

Alright John it's very simple. Irenaeus is the first to make explicit the notion that from the very beginning there was a consistent message from the apostles which was passed down without blemish to his time. Let's suppose that Irenaeus wrote SOMETHING or was active c. 180 CE. His argument then becomes - there are all these other forms of Christianity which aren't 'orthodox' or 'orthodoxy.' How did they arise? His solution is to argue that all these other doctrines were developed through the personal inventiveness of a number of schools headed by wicked men.

The model is clearly based on Socrates. Socrates existed but the accounts of Plato and Xenophon are difficult to reconcile. And then when you see the varieties beyond that the Skeptics and Aristotle's departure from Plato etc. he has a neat example of how intellectualism leads to diversity.

Why is diversity wrong? Here is the core argument of Irenaeus which isn't always as explicit as people want it to be. Christianity is at its core monarchian. How do we know this? Because monarchianism is the necessary truth of the one god who is ruler of all things. So, by back formation, since monarchia the 'one rule/ruler' of all things is necessarily the truth THEREFORE all forms, sects or schools of Christianity which stray from this underlying truth must necessarily be lies and their founders wicked men. Their doctrines which reinforce multiplicity in heaven are reflections of their own sectarian 'will' or nature rather than the heavenly truth which is based on the principle of 'oneness.'

Of course IT MIGHT BE true that Jesus or the first teachers of Christianity were similarly obsessed with monarchia. It might be likely. Christianity might have started from a Judaism which understood there to be more than one power in heaven (the tradition referenced in the mekhilta) and that the crucifixion and death of one of those gods led to the absorption of the one into the other god. Who knows.

The point is that Irenaeus's methodology isn't scientific. He isn't simply observing data and faithfully reporting what kinds of Christianity existed in antiquity. He is actively passing judgment on the multiplicity of forms of Christianity and offering up judgment for their continued existence in the world. The multiplicity of forms must end. The sects and their followers especially must bow to the principle of monarchia and join the catholic Church.

Within that context then even when he stumbles across actual evidence for forms of Christianity which he doesn't agree with he necessarily has to turn these other traditions into cautionary tales, he has to 'moralize' his account of the various accounts into cautionary tales.

I don't want to get too deeply into Irenaeus. In the end the late second, third and fourth centuries saw a sustained effort to argue on behalf of the monarchia - an argument which necessarily dovetails with efforts to 'sell' Christianity to the Imperial authorities. So we see Apelles interrogated by followers of Tatian over the question of the monarchia. It also finds expression in Celsus's treatise against Christianity where he grudgingly acknowledges that members of the 'great Church' are somehow different from the various sectarians he has obviously read about in one early heresiological collection (perhaps Irenaeus).

The point is that these collections weren't 'academic studies' and shouldn't be treated as such. They are first and foremost arguments on behalf of the heavenly monarchy and by consequence the correctness of 'one rule' on the earth. To this end, reports of sects who believe that there were more than power in heaven are necessarily skewed in the direction of exaggeration. Even if Christian groups believed that multiplicity resulted from a heavenly rape or impregnation of 'Wisdom' Jesus or Christ or the Paraclete had come down to earth to establish 'one rule.' This is the 'moral' even of these myths and stories which bear an uncanny resemblance to medieval kabbalah.

In kabbalah is well the 'moral' is the imperative of the individual to 'cleave' to godhead to facilitate or accomplish 'oneness' in heaven and on earth. This is clearly the imperative behind the 'rule of heaven' (kingdom of heaven) or 'God.' What historical event these imperatives for 'oneness' through individual actions of devotion is unclear but it can't be denied that the underlying presupposition is that the individual, his community and the world are in a state of 'weakness' that requires 'strengthening' on the part of its individual members to 'heal' the world order.
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
Secret Alias
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Re: Valens/Valentinus, Flora/Florinus and Marcus/Marcianus

Post by Secret Alias »

To this end since Irenaeus and the various apologists for monarchia 'just so happened' to rise to prominence in an age where Christianity was making inroads into the Imperial court the 'mythical' aspect of early Christianity - with its emphasis on how Jesus facilitated the path toward monarchia in heaven necessarily faded into the background. It wasn't as important, it wasn't at all necessary to argue on behalf of how monarchia could be achieved. Christianity was sitting on the doorstep of the world ruler it was being welcomed into his home. As such the message necessarily changed.

Let's suppose for argument sake that the various heretics were right and that the gospel unfolded as a kind of myth where for instance Mary Magdalene was the fallen Sophia who led to multiplicity in the universe (and away from the Oneness of the Father) this might have been 'necessary' in an age of chaos. It might have been necessary to introduce a myth of a redeemed fallen woman who gave birth to chaos in an chaotic environment. But in an age where 'unity' and order was on the doorstep it wasn't as necessary. If anything by reinforcing a chaotic origin for Christianity it became harder to argue for its reinforcing 'orderly values.'

It's like the wife of a billionaire who met her husband at a brothel. She has to bury her origins and the story of how they met.

This is the perspective of how I think we should view Irenaeus's attacks against the various heretics. But in the same way when Epiphanius comes around the entire process of gathering 'evidence' for multiplicity within Christianity as an argument for the 'true faith' of the Church became entirely parodistic. Epiphanius invented heresies that never existed. He made up salacious stories about sexualized rituals, about texts and traditions that didn't exist. I am not so sure that Irenaeus went as far.

Nevertheless Irenaeus doesn't tell us where he got his source material. He has assembled Book One of Adversus Haereses from other sources. Tertullian clearly had Against the Valentinians as a stand alone text. Tripp and Brent among others have successfully argued that the text against the followers of Marcus was another stand alone unit. Irenaeus at one point cites the presbyter Theophilus's verses against Marcus. He stops his original source and says 'we had these Marcosians in Lyons.' If he was writing c. 180 CE when was the original 'core account' written? Brent thinks 120 - 130 CE and he might be right.

It is worth noting that at one point where Justin is mentioning heretical groups the 'Marciani' (or whatever they are called in Greek) are mentioned first on the list. Spin will argue that in proper Latin in proper Greek there is no way to go from Marcus to the Marciani. Yet Epiphanius demonstrates that these old reports about those of Mark happen - for some reason - to be couched in reporting in a regional dialect. I happen to wonder, in keeping with my efforts to 'unpackage' these heretical reports that our first source about Marcion appears to be Papias and that coincidentally Marcion takes with him letters from Pontus. It has been demonstrated by recent scholarship argues that the Greek of the Pontus survived in an archaic form to the present day. That Greek had ίων rather than ων as the plural genitive suffix.

Of course we can't say when the Homeric suffix (epsilon-omega-nu) morphed into this ίων as the researchers suggest. We know very little about Pontic Greek. But it is possible that this was established in antiquity and that the letters that were brought and in the possession of Papias were identified as being 'Μαρκίων' because they were associated with a certain Μάρκος. We have already demonstrated in this thread that Irenaeus (who admits he spoke and wrote in a 'barbarous dialect') spoke of the Μαρκώσιοι and the region of Ῥοδανουσία he is betraying that he is writing in a regional dialect (associated with Rhegium in Magnia Grecia).

Interestingly enough I happened to learn that a Greek dialect is still spoken in Reggio (= Rhegium) Calabria and in Rhegium itself https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calabrian_Greek It has been argued that this dialect (as with Pontic Greek) preserved Doric elements from its original colonists.

To this end I have to wonder whether, given the fact that the Church Fathers exaggerated the number of heresies in order to help them argue on behalf of the monarchia whether Μαρκίων the Marciani and the Μαρκώσιοι were all the result of reports coming about the original tradition associated with Mark in obscure dialects. Clement of Alexandria being yet another secret Mark tradition.

Needless to say if indeed the report about the Marcosians comes from 120 CE and Papias's references to the gospel being in a different order and Clement of Alexandria and the various things preserved under the broad heading of 'Marcion' all point to what must have been the oral tradition associated with the first gospel. The information is often contradictory because the tradition was early and was subject to a lot of change by the end of the second century.

To me at least the most interesting thing was the manner in which kabbalah or mysticism was preserved in a form of archaic Greek (one which used letters ignored or dropped out of the contemporary Greek alphabet). Was this reflective of a pre-existent Jewish mysticism or did Mark or his followers inseminate or contaminate the Hebrew alphabet with this original system.
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
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John T
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Re: Valens/Valentinus, Flora/Florinus and Marcus/Marcianus

Post by John T »

I don't recall your take on Zoroastrianism.

How did Zoroastrianism fit into the world of Marcion, Irenaeus and the Roman Empire?
"It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into."...Jonathan Swift
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Re: Valens/Valentinus, Flora/Florinus and Marcus/Marcianus

Post by Secret Alias »

I don't have a take on Zoroastrianism. They're cool
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
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John T
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Re: Valens/Valentinus, Flora/Florinus and Marcus/Marcianus

Post by John T »

Secret Alias wrote:I don't have a take on Zoroastrianism. They're cool
Let me try again.

How did Zoroastrianism fit into the world of Marcion, Irenaeus and the Roman Empire?

Yes, this is very important.

Sincerely,

John T
"It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into."...Jonathan Swift
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Re: Valens/Valentinus, Flora/Florinus and Marcus/Marcianus

Post by Secret Alias »

I really can't see any link. Simon and Marcus are referenced as magi. Maybe that has something to do with their interest in fire. There seems to be some connection between the Dositheans or Dushtan and Farsi (i.e. the 'friends' of God). But no, I don't see any important connections unless I am missing something which is entirely possible.
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
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