Did Irenaeus Know What He Was Talking About?
Posted by Kushana Torumekia at 7/30/2011 1:59 PM 
Categories: Church Fathers, Gospel of Judas, Gnosticism, Christianity, Atheism, Bible, History, Heresy, Scholarship, Gospel of John, Humor, Nag Hammadi Library, Ancient Religions, New Testament, Gnostic Gospels
Tags: Gnosticism Nag Hammadi Library Irenaeus Church Fathers Against Heresies Atheism Gospel of John Logos Apocryphon of John Secret Book of John Gospel of Judas New Testament Eve Chava
Categories: Church Fathers, Gospel of Judas, Gnosticism, Christianity, Atheism, Bible, History, Heresy, Scholarship, Gospel of John, Humor, Nag Hammadi Library, Ancient Religions, New Testament, Gnostic Gospels
Tags: Gnosticism Nag Hammadi Library Irenaeus Church Fathers Against Heresies Atheism Gospel of John Logos Apocryphon of John Secret Book of John Gospel of Judas New Testament Eve Chava
A reader named Bill writes in and asks about the names Irenaeus uses in Chapter 1 of Against Heresies:
Bill wonders why he does not find these names in some translations of the Nag Hammadi Library. Wasn’t Irenaeus writing about the Gnostics? (Indeed the Church Father specifies he is describing the ideas of the school of Gnostics called the Valentinians and we have Valentinian texts in the Nag Hammadi Library.)
It does not help that some older translations of Against Heresies (like the ones available for free online) Latinizes the Greek names (especially since the Coptic of the Nag Hammadi Library distorts Greek names in its own distinctive and Egyptian way.) This makes the names difficult to recognize (for scholars and readers). However, Irenaeus’ “Proarche” is First Ruler, his “Propator” is First Father, his “Bythus” is Depth, “Ennoea” is Thought, “Charis" is Grace (or Loveliness), “Sige” is Silence.
If you search here“Bythus” will get no results, but “Silence” will:
http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/nhsearch.html
It is always difficult to know when to translate a name: look at different translations of the New Testament Gospel of John, some leave the complex Greek term logos (which has a paragraph of meanings) as “Logos”, some translate it as “Word” (when it can mean anything from “a spoken word” to “the structure and order of the universe”). In Against Heresies Irenaeus also mentions the names “Monogenes” (Self Begotten), “Aletheia” (Truth), "Nous" (Mind), "Logos" (Ordering Structure of the Universe), and "Zoe" (Life, used in some Gnostic texts as a Greek name for Chava/Eve).
In the middle of this invasion of Greek personifications and titles (which some translators translate into English and some leave in Greek) keep in mind that ancient Gnosticism was worried about how one distant, perfect God could create an imperfect world. The Gnostics always proposed a set of intermediate stages that both moved the world far away from God and made Creation the result of a series of mistakes and ignorant (or evil) decisions by middle managers. (Making them very much like some modern atheist humor which imagines Creation as the end process of a too-large and bumbling corporation.) However, since God is perfect in Gnosticism God intervenes and sends an agent in to rescue the Gnostics from the world. (Gnostic mythology is a bit like a good summer movie: very complex and full of strange names and concepts, but ultimately the hero always wins.)
If you are curious, this is Irenaeus’ account of what Valentinian Gnostics believe:
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf01.ix.ii.ii.html
This is what the Valentinians say they believe:
http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/valex.html
http://www.gnosis.org/library/flora.htm
We have had the accounts of Church Fathers and heresy hunters like Irenaeus from Antiquity, we have had accounts from the Gnostics themselves for only about 65 years (it took 30 of those years to translate the texts, we have spent the next 35 still sorting out just what we have and what to make of it all.) In fact, the study of Gnosticism is just catching up the fact that it based much of what it thought on 19th century books summarizing and theorizing about what the ancient religion was. (These earlier scholars did not work in modern academia and thus had to leisure to write encyclopedic and magisterial life-works on single subjects.) These earlier scholars based their work on the reports of the Church Fathers: they had to, we had few things written by actual Gnostics at that early date. Our predecessors did the best they could to incorporate what these actual Gnostic texts said but their sources often came from a much later time period or very different types of Gnosticism (and like all Gnostic texts they were puzzling, obscure and difficult.)
Then, in 1945, we discovered a library of Gnostic texts (the Nag Hammadi Library) from about the same place and time as the Gnostic movements described by the Church fathers: 48 separate books (some of them simply books the Gnostics were interested in rather than actual Gnostic scriptures) from at least 3 branches of Gnosticism. (Just as Christianity has denominations so ancient Gnostics had branches, although the differences between different branches of Gnosticism are greater than between any two living types of Christianity. (All of the large differences in Christianity were removed during the era of the ancient Church Councils.))
With very few exceptions this Egyptian Gnostic library does not match what the Church Fathers told us about Gnosticism (and the few matches we have are not very exact.) Modern scholars of Gnosticism have done different things with this problem: Dr. Birger Pearson discusses types of Gnosticism described only by the Church Fathers alongside forms of Gnosticism thoroughly documented by their own ancient books. (Most historians want two accounts before they will write about something: often history does not provide this.) Dr. Karen King thinks the whole category of “Gnosticism” should be thrown out, that it is a kind of hologram created by the Church Fathers and that our existing evidence (even with the idea of different Gnostic schools) is too varied to fit under one roof.
The divergence between what Irenaeus and other Church Fathers say and the Gnostic texts themselves raise a lot of disturbing questions: did the Church Fathers know what they were talking about? (People tended not to question this since they were Church Fathers and without anything from the Gnostics we had to take them at their word.) How did the Church Fathers get their information? Did they ever distort what they knew (our accounts come not from neutral reports but from crusading books intended to defend the faith: Irenaeus, for example makes the promulgation of Gnostic personifications sound like sex even though all of the Nag Hammadi texts we have ascetic and make the process as unbiological as possible). Did the Church Fathers ever hold and actual Gnostic book in their hands? Did they ever talk to an actual Gnostic? (I would not count purported cases lay people who had re-converted to proto-orthodoxy and were now answering the questions of an angry (or disappointed) member of the emerging church hierarchy: the temptation to answer “Yes, Bishop, those awful people *did* kick puppies” would be too great.)
We cannot know. We cannot ask the Church Fathers what sources they were working from and when they exaggerated or distorted what they knew. (It may be that the Church Fathers themselves were working from third-hand information.) We do know that later Church Fathers copied (and added florid details) to the works of earlier Church Fathers who wrote about heretics: the later we go in time the less interest Great Church authors have in checking with actual Gnostic sources and the more set and formulaic the denunciations of heretics become. Irenaeus, however, was very early in this process and in at least two cases he knew something about two Gnostic books (The Apocryphon of John (also called the Secret Book of John) and the Gospel of Judas.) That is, however, two books out of some 50 which have survived and scores more which are lost. (In his defense, no ancient writer had access to every book: books were hand copied, expensive and there were no bookstore chains with great regional warehouses or public libraries with Inter-Library Loan in Antiquity.)
So, yes, Irenaeus uses terms used by actual Gnostics and his account loosely resembles Gnostic ideas about how a series of intermediaries led a perfect God to create an imperfect world. However, (unless you are studying the Apocryphon of John or the Gospel of Judas) I would study actual Gnostic texts first and only read the Church Fathers later: the differences are too great and the problem of why there are differences is too complex (and perhaps cannot be answered.) There are good recent, readable translations of the Nag Hammadi texts which do their best to explain them on their own terms – and the first rule of history is to start with the accounts of the people, themselves.
-Kushana
They maintain, then, that in the invisible and ineffable heights above there exists a certain perfect, pre-existent whom they call Proarche, Propator, and Bythus, and describe as being invisible and incomprehensible. Eternal and unbegotten, he remained throughout innumerable cycles of ages in profound serenity and quiescence. There existed along with him Ennœa, whom they also call Charis and Sige.
Bill wonders why he does not find these names in some translations of the Nag Hammadi Library. Wasn’t Irenaeus writing about the Gnostics? (Indeed the Church Father specifies he is describing the ideas of the school of Gnostics called the Valentinians and we have Valentinian texts in the Nag Hammadi Library.)
It does not help that some older translations of Against Heresies (like the ones available for free online) Latinizes the Greek names (especially since the Coptic of the Nag Hammadi Library distorts Greek names in its own distinctive and Egyptian way.) This makes the names difficult to recognize (for scholars and readers). However, Irenaeus’ “Proarche” is First Ruler, his “Propator” is First Father, his “Bythus” is Depth, “Ennoea” is Thought, “Charis" is Grace (or Loveliness), “Sige” is Silence.
If you search here“Bythus” will get no results, but “Silence” will:
http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/nhsearch.html
It is always difficult to know when to translate a name: look at different translations of the New Testament Gospel of John, some leave the complex Greek term logos (which has a paragraph of meanings) as “Logos”, some translate it as “Word” (when it can mean anything from “a spoken word” to “the structure and order of the universe”). In Against Heresies Irenaeus also mentions the names “Monogenes” (Self Begotten), “Aletheia” (Truth), "Nous" (Mind), "Logos" (Ordering Structure of the Universe), and "Zoe" (Life, used in some Gnostic texts as a Greek name for Chava/Eve).
In the middle of this invasion of Greek personifications and titles (which some translators translate into English and some leave in Greek) keep in mind that ancient Gnosticism was worried about how one distant, perfect God could create an imperfect world. The Gnostics always proposed a set of intermediate stages that both moved the world far away from God and made Creation the result of a series of mistakes and ignorant (or evil) decisions by middle managers. (Making them very much like some modern atheist humor which imagines Creation as the end process of a too-large and bumbling corporation.) However, since God is perfect in Gnosticism God intervenes and sends an agent in to rescue the Gnostics from the world. (Gnostic mythology is a bit like a good summer movie: very complex and full of strange names and concepts, but ultimately the hero always wins.)
If you are curious, this is Irenaeus’ account of what Valentinian Gnostics believe:
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf01.ix.ii.ii.html
This is what the Valentinians say they believe:
http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/valex.html
http://www.gnosis.org/library/flora.htm
We have had the accounts of Church Fathers and heresy hunters like Irenaeus from Antiquity, we have had accounts from the Gnostics themselves for only about 65 years (it took 30 of those years to translate the texts, we have spent the next 35 still sorting out just what we have and what to make of it all.) In fact, the study of Gnosticism is just catching up the fact that it based much of what it thought on 19th century books summarizing and theorizing about what the ancient religion was. (These earlier scholars did not work in modern academia and thus had to leisure to write encyclopedic and magisterial life-works on single subjects.) These earlier scholars based their work on the reports of the Church Fathers: they had to, we had few things written by actual Gnostics at that early date. Our predecessors did the best they could to incorporate what these actual Gnostic texts said but their sources often came from a much later time period or very different types of Gnosticism (and like all Gnostic texts they were puzzling, obscure and difficult.)
Then, in 1945, we discovered a library of Gnostic texts (the Nag Hammadi Library) from about the same place and time as the Gnostic movements described by the Church fathers: 48 separate books (some of them simply books the Gnostics were interested in rather than actual Gnostic scriptures) from at least 3 branches of Gnosticism. (Just as Christianity has denominations so ancient Gnostics had branches, although the differences between different branches of Gnosticism are greater than between any two living types of Christianity. (All of the large differences in Christianity were removed during the era of the ancient Church Councils.))
With very few exceptions this Egyptian Gnostic library does not match what the Church Fathers told us about Gnosticism (and the few matches we have are not very exact.) Modern scholars of Gnosticism have done different things with this problem: Dr. Birger Pearson discusses types of Gnosticism described only by the Church Fathers alongside forms of Gnosticism thoroughly documented by their own ancient books. (Most historians want two accounts before they will write about something: often history does not provide this.) Dr. Karen King thinks the whole category of “Gnosticism” should be thrown out, that it is a kind of hologram created by the Church Fathers and that our existing evidence (even with the idea of different Gnostic schools) is too varied to fit under one roof.
The divergence between what Irenaeus and other Church Fathers say and the Gnostic texts themselves raise a lot of disturbing questions: did the Church Fathers know what they were talking about? (People tended not to question this since they were Church Fathers and without anything from the Gnostics we had to take them at their word.) How did the Church Fathers get their information? Did they ever distort what they knew (our accounts come not from neutral reports but from crusading books intended to defend the faith: Irenaeus, for example makes the promulgation of Gnostic personifications sound like sex even though all of the Nag Hammadi texts we have ascetic and make the process as unbiological as possible). Did the Church Fathers ever hold and actual Gnostic book in their hands? Did they ever talk to an actual Gnostic? (I would not count purported cases lay people who had re-converted to proto-orthodoxy and were now answering the questions of an angry (or disappointed) member of the emerging church hierarchy: the temptation to answer “Yes, Bishop, those awful people *did* kick puppies” would be too great.)
We cannot know. We cannot ask the Church Fathers what sources they were working from and when they exaggerated or distorted what they knew. (It may be that the Church Fathers themselves were working from third-hand information.) We do know that later Church Fathers copied (and added florid details) to the works of earlier Church Fathers who wrote about heretics: the later we go in time the less interest Great Church authors have in checking with actual Gnostic sources and the more set and formulaic the denunciations of heretics become. Irenaeus, however, was very early in this process and in at least two cases he knew something about two Gnostic books (The Apocryphon of John (also called the Secret Book of John) and the Gospel of Judas.) That is, however, two books out of some 50 which have survived and scores more which are lost. (In his defense, no ancient writer had access to every book: books were hand copied, expensive and there were no bookstore chains with great regional warehouses or public libraries with Inter-Library Loan in Antiquity.)
So, yes, Irenaeus uses terms used by actual Gnostics and his account loosely resembles Gnostic ideas about how a series of intermediaries led a perfect God to create an imperfect world. However, (unless you are studying the Apocryphon of John or the Gospel of Judas) I would study actual Gnostic texts first and only read the Church Fathers later: the differences are too great and the problem of why there are differences is too complex (and perhaps cannot be answered.) There are good recent, readable translations of the Nag Hammadi texts which do their best to explain them on their own terms – and the first rule of history is to start with the accounts of the people, themselves.
-Kushana
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