Where did Epiphanius get the unusual dialectical form ώσιοι from the very archaic Greek colony from Reggio Calabria? He began is dictation to Anatolius by identifying the sect with the title of the section:
Κατὰ Μαρκωσίων
Then, likely holding Irenaeus's original treatise in his hand went on to declare:
Μάρκος δέ τις, ἀφ' οὗπερ οἱ Μαρκώσιοι καλούμενοι
A certain Marcus, the founder of the so-called Marcosians
Then after paraphrasing the contents of Irenaeus's account either he dictated the entire section (as Jacobs believes) or Anatolius subsequently added to the dictated paraphrase (as I suspect):
Ἐγὼ τοίνυν ἵνα μὴ εἰς δεύτερον κάματον ἑαυτὸν ἐπιδῶ, ἀρκεσθῆναι δεῖν ἡγησάμην τοῖς ἀπὸ τοῦ μακαριωτάτου καὶ ἁγιωτάτου Εἰρηναίου κατ' αὐτοῦ τοῦ Μάρκου καὶ τῶν ἐξ αὐτοῦ ὁρμωμένων πραγματευθεῖσιν, ἅτινα ἐνταῦθα πρὸς ἔπος ἐκθέσθαι ἐσπούδασα, καὶ ἔστιν τάδε. φάσκει γὰρ αὐτὸς Εἰρηναῖος ὁ ἅγιος ἐν τῷ ὑποφαίνειν τὰ ὑπ' αὐτῶν γενόμενα, λέγων οὕτως
But for my part, so as not to commit myself to a second hard task I feel I should be content with the work written against Marcus himself and his successors by the most holy and blessed Irenaeus. I hasten to publish this here word for word, and it runs as follows. For St. Irenaeus himself says the following in his disclosure of the things they did: From the writings of St. Irenaeus
The question of course is whether Irenaeus's barbaric dialect (Praef.1) can be identified? Apparently it can from his attempts at isometra or gematria in Book 5. He spells Latin (Λατεινος for λατινος, Latinus)
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%CE%9B%C ... E%BF%CF%82 and Τειταν, i.e., Titus.
It should be noted also the odd spelling of 'Christ' in the cited text from Irenaeus:
And the Saviour's spoken name, Jesous, is of six letters, but his unutterable name of twenty-four. 'Uios Chreistos (Χρειστός)' is of twelve letters, but the ineffable name in Christ is of thirty. And she calls him alpha and omega for this reason, to make mention of the dove, since this is 'dove's' numerical value.
9:1 But Jesus has the following ineffable origin, she says. From the Mother of all, the first tetrad, the second tetrad34 came forth in the role of daughter and became an ogdoad, out of which a decad came forth. Now there were a decad and an ogdoad.
9:2 Joining the ogdoad once more and multiplying it by ten,35 the decad produced the next number, eighty. Multiplying the eighty by ten again it generated the number 800, so that the sum total of the letters which issue from eight times ten is an eight, an eighty, and an 800, which is 'Jesus.'
9:3 For counted by the sum which is found in its letters, the word, 'Jesus,' is 888. You are now clear as to Jesus' origin beyond the heavens, as they explain it.
9:4 And this is why the Greek alphabet contains eight units, eight tens, and eight hundreds, giving the figure of 888—in other words, Jesus, who is composed of all the numbers. He is thus called 'alpha and omega' to indicate his origin from all.
9:5 And again: When the first tetrad was added to itself cumulatively the number ten was produced; for when one, two, three and four are added they make ten, or iota, and they hold that this is Jesus.
9:6 But 'Chreistos (Χρειστός)' too, she says, which has eight letters, means the first ogdoad which, in the iota's embrace, brought forth Jesus.
Yes Irenaeus is citing what the followers of Marcus say (theoretically) but he does not correct them for identifying Christos as containing eight letters. He later criticizes the Marcosians for understanding 'Jesus' to = 888 but not for their bad spelling of Χρειστός which likely means he also spelled the name this way.
“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