Could 'Irenaeus' Have Been Julius Sextus Africanus?

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Secret Alias
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Could 'Irenaeus' Have Been Julius Sextus Africanus?

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I think this possibility is the best of all the 'alternative explanations' for Irenaeus. First of all Julius Sextus Africanus knew the Bible. He argued with Origen. Like Irenaeus knew Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. He spent a lot of time in libraries and most importantly altered the contents of 'holy' books. If my theory about Polycarp holds true (i.e. that he claimed to be Joseph from the Jerusalem episcopal list) both Irenaeus and Africanus would have claimed to have met descendants (desposynoi) of Jesus. Interestingly the traditional dating for Julius Africanus's birth was before 160 CE. This would have allowed him to say with Irenaeus that he saw Polycarp as a young boy. It would also explain why he couldn't claim to be a disciple of Polycarp (he was too young). Also if Julius Sextus Africanus was a descendant of Julius Africanus of Rome an orator at the time of Nero. Pliny the Younger mentions a grandson of this Julius Africanus, who was also an advocate and was opposed to him upon one occasion. Pliny died 116 CE. What is interesting about this bloodline is that despite his name being 'Africanus' this Julius Africanus was the son of a Gallic chief he was a member of a Celtic tribe thus at least offering an explanation for the claim that Irenaeus was from Gaul.
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Re: Could 'Irenaeus' Have Been Julius Sextus Africanus?

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Another argument the two were related relating back to - you guessed it - Hegesippus:
The most ancient list of popes is one made by Hegesippus in the time of Pope Anicetus, c. 160 (Harnack ascribes it to an unknown author under Soter, c. 170), cited by St. Epiphanius (Haer., xxvii, 6). It seems to have been used by St. Irenæus (Haer., III, iii), by Julius Africanus, who composed a chronography in 222, by the third- or fourth-century author of a Latin poem against Marcion, and by Hippolytus, who see chronology extends to 234 and is probably found in the "Liberian Catalogue" of 354. That catalogue was itself adopted in the "Liber Pontificalis". Eusebius in his chronicle and history used Africanus; in the latter he slightly corrected the dates. St. Jerome's chronicle is a translation of Eusebius's, and is our principal means for restoring the lost Greek of the latter; the Armenian version and Coptic epitomes of it are not to be depended on. The varieties of order are as follows:

Linus, Cletus, Clemens (Hegesippus, ap. Epiphanium, Canon of Mass).
Linus, Anencletus, Clemens (Irenaeus, Africanus ap. Eusebium).
Linus, Anacletus, Clemens (Jerome).
Linus, Cletus, Anacletus, Clemens (Poem against Marcion),
Linus, Clemens, Cletus, Anacletus [Hippolytus (?), "Liberian Catal."- "Liber. Pont."].
Linus, Clemens, Anacletus (doubts that Cletus, Anacletus, Anencletus, are the same person. Anacletus is a Latin error; Cletus is a shortened (and more Christian) form of Anencletus.
“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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Peter Kirby
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Re: Could 'Irenaeus' Have Been Julius Sextus Africanus?

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Secret Alias wrote: Thu Jul 19, 2018 7:12 amInterestingly the traditional dating for Julius Africanus's birth was before 160 CE. This would have allowed him to say with Irenaeus that he saw Polycarp as a young boy.
If Julius Africanus was a native of Palestine / Aelia Capitolina, then that is a long ways from Asia Minor / Smyrna, for a young boy.

Against Heresies, 3.3.4:
But Polycarp also was not only instructed by apostles, and conversed with many who had seen Christ, but was also, by apostles in Asia, appointed bishop of the Church in Smyrna, whom I also saw in my early youth, for he tarried [on earth] a very long time, and, when a very old man, gloriously and most nobly suffering martyrdom, departed this life, having always taught the things which he had learned from the apostles, and which the Church has handed down, and which alone are true. To these things all the Asiatic Churches testify, as do also those men who have succeeded Polycarp down to the present time
Cest. 5.51 refers to Aelia Capitolina as "the old home" (arxaia patris).

I suppose that there are lots of ways to try to overcome this. One possibility is to disassociate the Cestoi from Julius Africanus. It might also be possible to stretch the meaning of the Against Heresies here, to say that the sighting was in Palestine, but that would of course be a stretch.
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Re: Could 'Irenaeus' Have Been Julius Sextus Africanus?

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Peter Kirby wrote: Thu Jul 19, 2018 4:27 pm Cest. 5.51 refers to Aelia Capitolina as "the old home" (arxaia patris).
I presume the implication is Aelia Capitolina was Africanus' home/birth place. If so, what would his parents' ethnicity or religious have been, beyond 'Gentile'?

It would be good to be able to discern what religion/s many of the so-called 'Gentiles' families were from
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Re: Could 'Irenaeus' Have Been Julius Sextus Africanus?

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Francis C. R. Thee's Julius Africanus and the Early Christian View of Magic (Mohr Siebeck, 1984) refers to two or three Julius Africanus's

pp. 38-9 https://books.google.com.au/books?id=ON ... us&f=false -
Africanus Chronographus (called Julius Africanus by Scaliger) was from Palestine .. and was a Christian, while Africanus Cestus (incorrectly called Sextus Africanus by Scaliger) was from Libya (as Suidas testifies) and was a 'Gentile' ... Further Valois concluded there was another Julius Africanus, author of De bellico appatatu known to him form a manuscript in the rouyal library and by Politian's citation. Valois assuemes that itwas a Greek custom to call such works of diverse content Kestoi, from its meaning of variegated girdle, just as Clements work was called Stromateis. The suggestion of a thrud Africanus found few, if any, supporters but his other points have been adopted in varying combinations by later scholars down to the present. Especially frequented repeated .. the points of distinction between Africanus Chronographus and Africanus Cestus, and the emendation of the Suida's sektos to kestos.
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[Though, p.40] JR Wettstein, in his edition of Origen's works .. was "inclined to believe with Lambeck, that Sextus Julius Africanus was that one and celebrated writer rather than two."
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Isaac Voss ... concludes that there was no reason to make three Africani of one ...
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Re: Could 'Irenaeus' Have Been Julius Sextus Africanus?

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Edgar J. Goodspeed on Julius Africanus http://www.intratext.com/IXT/ENG0833/_P2C.HTM
When the emperor Septimius Severus campaigned against Osrhoene and the region of Edessa on the Upper Euphrates in A.D. 195, one of his officers was a young man from Aelia Capitolina ... His name was Julius Africanus. He penetrated to Mount Ararat and spent some years at Edessa, where he enjoyed the friendship of King Abgar II and went hunting with the Edessene princes. Later in life we find him settled at Emmaus in Palestine and engaged in literary work. From Emmaus he led a delegation that was sent to the emperor Alexander Severus to ask that the town be restored, and in consequence it was rebuilt as Nicopolis. At Rome he designed a beautiful library for the emperor in the Pantheon. He removed to Alexandria for a time to hear the lectures of Heraclas, who later became the successor of Origen as head of the catechetical school. Africanus knew Origen and, as late as A.D. 240, exchanged letters with him. He was a devout believer in the scriptures, but he was not a presbyter or a bishop but a soldier, at home in both camps and courts, and a man of letters.

In A.D. 221r he published his Chronography, or Chronicle, in five books. It traced the course of history from the Creation, making use of the Old Testament and other chronological sources, Greek and Jewish, among them the account of the Jewish kings written by Justus of Tiberias.

The aim of Africanus was to show that human history fell into six days of a thousand years each,[86] that the coming of Christ occurred in the year of the world 5500 ... the main features of this chronology (the so-called Alexandrian era) were widely adopted in the East. The Chronography was full of valuable excerpts from earlier chroniclers, but its scattered fragments have not yet been fully assembled. Yet it has been called the root of Christian chronography and has proved an important source for Hippolytus, for the Chronicle of Eusebius, and later for the Paschal Chronicle early in the seventh century, and Georgius Syncellus, late in the eighth.

The other chief work of Africanus was his Cestoi, or Paradoxaa sort of notebook of strange pieces of curious information on all sorts of subjects, medical, military, magical, scientific, and literary -the miscellanies accumulated by a traveled and inquiring mind. The book was dedicated to the emperor Alexander Severus, the author's friend and patron.

... a papyrus of two columns of it, written in the middle of the third century (almost in the lifetime of Africanus) and found at Oxyrhynchus...preserves the end of one book and concludes: “Of Julius Africanus Cestus 18.” ...

Africanus also wrote some very significant letters. One, addressed to a certain Aristides, about the genealogies of Christ, appealing to the Jewish practice of levirate marriage to reconcile their differences in Matthew and Luke, was used by Origen in his earliest homilies, on Luke. But his most famous letter is that written about A.D. 240 to Origen to show that the story of Susanna cannot have been an original part of the Book of Daniel ...
Francis C. R. Thee refers to this at the bottom of p. 90 of Julius Africanus and the Early Christian View of Magic, but I can't see pp. 91 & 92.
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Re: Could 'Irenaeus' Have Been Julius Sextus Africanus?

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MrMacSon wrote: Thu Jul 19, 2018 4:47 pm
Peter Kirby wrote: Thu Jul 19, 2018 4:27 pm Cest. 5.51 refers to Aelia Capitolina as "the old home" (arxaia patris).
I presume the implication is Aelia Capitolina was Africanus' home/birth place. If so, what would his parents' ethnicity or religious have been, beyond 'Gentile'?

It would be good to be able to discern what religion/s many of the so-called 'Gentiles' families were from
I don't know, off hand. Do you have any suggestions?
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MrMacSon
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Re: Could 'Irenaeus' Have Been Julius Sextus Africanus?

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Peter Kirby wrote: Thu Jul 19, 2018 9:23 pm I don't know, off hand. Do you have any suggestions?
There are various references in Francis C. R. Thee's Julius Africanus and the Early Christian View of Magic to Africanus being a Gentile (p.40), a Latin-speaking soldier, and a Jew (attributed to a Freidrich Blass, p.68). The conclusion of the first chapter on p. 100 asks
  • "what are the areas of overlap of 'syncretistic Christianity' and 'syncretistic paganism' in the Severan period?"
'
  • 'how is the Christianity of Africanus to be correlated with the contents and spirit of the Kestoi?"
  • "what do the contents and spirit of the Kestoi tell us about the Christianity of the time of Africanus"?
https://books.google.com.au/books?id=ON ... us&f=false -

It may tell us but the rest seems to be a translation. There is reference to 'Africanus the Babylonian' on p. 189
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Re: Could 'Irenaeus' Have Been Julius Sextus Africanus?

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SA- do you no longer hold that Polycarp was Peregrinus with a dash of Ignatius? Or do you still think that theory holds true but as a man of many names he also claimed to be this Joseph?
The metric to judge if one is a good exegete: the way he/she deals with Barabbas.

Who disagrees with me on this precise point is by definition an idiot.
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Re: Could 'Irenaeus' Have Been Julius Sextus Africanus?

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No I think that's probably right. It's just difficult to properly define in a way that you could say something 'scholarly' about it. I think Lucian is reporting about a real person who rose in the ranks of the Palestinian church, was arrested in Antioch, went to Egypt and Rome - made a name for himself accusing the Emperor - then died a fiery martyr in Olympia after more than a decade of antagonizing Herodes Atticus. I think the corpus of Christian writings is corrupt. I don't think it was a complete 'forgery from scratch.' I think there are 'authentic bits' surrounded by layers of garbage in each Christian document. My question has always been 'what's the real connection between Polycarp and Irenaeus.' If Irenaeus and Polycarp were titles then it is possible to see a tentative (weak) link between Joseph and Africanus if we take the latter's reference to meeting a δεσπόσυνος. Not a proof really. Just a possibility.
“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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