2.3 Irenaeus on Creation and Incarnation: Haer. 1.9.3 (Gen 2:7)
chapter 2 as a spiritual womb.26 In time the spirit seed will grow and become the receptor "of the perfect Knowledge" (perfectae Rationis).27 The action of Achamoth completes the fourfold elements of humanity where the first man has "his soul is from Demiurge, his body is from the earth, his fleshy element is from matter, and his spiritual element is from his Mother Achamoth" (animam quidem a Demiurgo, corpus autem a limo, et carneum a material, spiritalem uero hominem a matre Achamoth).28 These four elements are interpreted in an intricate chronological understanding of the formation of Adam that conflates of imagery resident in Gen 1:26, Gen 2:7, Gen 3:21, and 1 Cor 15:47, but infuses them with the images and characters of the Valentinian myth.
2.3
Irenaeus on Creation and Incarnation: Haer. 1.9.3 (Gen 2:7) Having laid the basis of the Valentinian myth, in Haer. 1.8–9 Irenaeus addresses specific exegetical and hermeneutical issues with the Valentinian use of scripture. Using the example of the mosaic representing the image of a king and a Homeric cento (alongside other polemical illustrations) he argues that the Valentinians abuse the scriptures because they consistently "adapt" (aptare) them to the structure of their myth.29 In terms of their reading of Gen 1–3,
Irenaeus has already showed how the Gnostics reject the terminology of the Mosaic account in preference for the imagery of the prideful deity in Isa 45:5, or the earthly substance in 1 Cor 15:47.
In this section Irenaeus suggests that the apostle John, contra the Valentinians, never intended in his work to reveal the Ogdoad in their cosmological system. Instead, he argues that John only preached one God and one
Christ Jesus, the Word of God who became flesh (John 1:14).30 The Valentinians, on the other hand, deny the Word become flesh, because the Savior assumed a psychic body that mysteriously became visible. In order to define what John means by "flesh" (caro) in John 1:14, Irenaeus reads this passage in continuity with the formation of Adam from the dust in Gen 2:7.31 In Irenaeus' intertextual exegesis, the σάρξ of John 1:14 is identical to the "ancient handiwork made by God out of the earth as in Adam" (vetus de limo secundum Adam facta plas26 Holsinger-Friesen, Irenaeus, 83.
27 Haer. 1.5.6.
28 Haer. 1.5.6.
29 Haer. 1.8.1–2.
30 Haer. 1.9.1.
31 Haer. 1.9.3.