2.4 The Marcosian Reading of Creation: Haer. 1.14.6 and Haer. 1.18.1–4
READING GNOSTIC CREATION
matio a Deo).32 Through this intertextual reading, the common vocabulary of Adam's formation and Christ's incarnation are the catchwords that bind these passages together. The imagery of Adam's formation actually defines the nature of flesh in John's gospel. He even goes so far as to suggest this intertextual connection is the apostle's intention by which he aimed to dismantle their first and principal Ogdoad. In other words, through uniting the nature of Adam and Christ's flesh, the apostle John contradicted the Valentinian interpretation of the substance of Adam's formation in Gen 2:7. This essential hermeneutical link between Gen 2:7 and John 1:14 will resurface in Irenaeus' intertextual exegesis throughout Haer. 3–5.
2.4
The Marcosian Reading of Creation: Haer. 1.14.6 and Haer. 1.18.1–4 After engaging the Valentinian system in Haer. 1–9 and responding to some of their theological perspectives, in Haer. 1.13–20 Irenaeus turns his attention to Marcus and the Marcosians who offer an adapted version of the Valentinian myth.33 In terms of intertextuality, the Marcosians have an acute fascination for gematria and the numeric correspondence between scripture and their cosmological myth. They also conflate the Adamic creation imagery in a manner similar to the Valentinians. The attention given to numerology is the clearest methodological distinction between Irenaeus and the Gnostics. Irenaeus rejects this method outright because the numbers are interpreted symbolically in accordance with the Gnostic system and not interpreted in their literal sense, and within the contours of the divine economy.
2.4.1
Marcus and the Sixth Day of Creation: Haer. 1.14.6 (Gen 1:31) While Irenaeus describes other aspects of their system, in Haer. 1.14.1–4 he focuses on the revelation Marcus received from the Tetrad who descended in the form of a woman and revealed to him the origin and meaning of all things.
He argues that the cosmological system revealed to him is confirmed through various kinds of numerology or gametria. The exegetical method of gematria is
32 Haer. 1.9.3.
33 Ismo Dunderberg, "The School of Valentinus," in A Companion to Second-Century
Christian 'Heretics,' eds. Antti Marjanen and Petri Loumanen, 64–99 (Leiden: Brill, 2005),
82; Grant, Gnosticism and the Early Church (New York: Columbia University Press, 1966),
64; Thomassen, The Spiritual Seed, 499.
chapter 2 the practice of interpreting a word based upon the numeric value of its letters.34
Marcus' gametria, though, does not merely count letters, but also entities, beings, titles, or anything within a text that corresponds to the numeric values of his theological system. The philosophical basis for the numerical representation is the ontological congruence between "being" and "truth" in the form of speech, so that "what is spoken is at the same time that which it speaks about."35
This kind of correspondence unnerves Irenaeus, because of the obvious rejection of the plain sense meaning of the terms and concepts in Gen 1–3, and direct correspondence with similar images of found elsewhere in scripture.
In addition, the correspondence between scriptural terms and their assumed referent comes to bear upon Irenaeus' understanding of the correspondence between the divine titles and pronouns in scripture and the identity of the persons of the triune God.36
While his presentation of Marconian gametria is rather developed, in Haer. 1.14.6 Irenaeus recounts a series of passages united through representation of the number six. Matt 17:1 describes the transfiguration on the sixth day when Jesus took Peter, James, and John up to the mountain. Then, after Moses and Elijah appeared the number of those present at the transfiguration also totaled six. In John 19:14 Jesus prepared for the Passover at the sixth hour and he also suffered death on the cross in Matt 27:45 at the sixth hour.37 Of course,
34 B. Ehrman, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 387, 454.
35 Thomassen, The Spiritual Seed, 243.
36 In Haer. 1.9.3, he has already previewed this argument by asserting that all the individual aeons comprising the Valentinian Ogdoad (Word, Only Begotten, Life, Light, Savior, Christ, and Son of God) as the one and same Son of God who became incarnate in the person of Christ. This point will be essential to a reading strategy called "prosopological exegesis" which I will discuss in subsequent chapters. For a discussion of prosopological exegesis see: Carl Andresen, "Zur Entstehung und Geschichte des trinitarischen Personbegriffes,"
ZNW 52 (1961): 1–39; Marie-Josèphe Rondeau, Les commentateurs patristiques du Psautier
(IIIe–Ve siècls), (2 vols; Rome: Pont. Institutum Studiorum Orientalium, 1982, 1985), 1:19;
Michael Slusser, "The Exegetical Roots of Trinitarian Theology," TS 49 (1988): 461–476,
462–3; Matthew W. Bates, The Hermeneutics of the Apostolic Proclamation: The Center of Paul's Method of Scriptural Interpretation (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2012); Stephen
O. Presley, "Irenaeus and the Exegetical Roots of Trinitarian Theology," in Irenaeus: Life,
Scripture, Legacy (ed. P. Foster and S. Parvis; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2012), 165–71.
Andresen uses the term "prosopographic exegesis" as a method of listing or cataloging the speaker(s) in a text, but Rondeau and Slusser agree that "prosopological exegesis" more clearly explains this early Christian method of exegesis, because this term implies the process of identifying the speakers in a text. Slusser, "Exegetical Roots," 462–63.
37 Cf. Luke 15:33.
READING GNOSTIC CREATION
this numerological conflation also includes the formation of humankind on the "sixth day" (sexta die), echoing the creation of Adam in Gen 1:31. Adam's creation on the sixth day, therefore, is not interpreted in its normal literary sense as it contributes to the description of the formation of creation and humanity. Instead, it is excised from this context and linked with other scriptures that contain similar numeric values in order to demonstrate the features of their theological system.
2.4.2
The Marcosians on Creation: Haer. 1.18.1–4 (Gen 1:2, Gen 1:3–27, Gen 1:26, Gen 2:10) In the intervening chapters between Haer. 1.14–18, Irenaeus continues detailing the complexity of Marcosian gametria. This includes some general speculation about their cosmogony and cosmology, which includes many terms and images from creation, but nothing that is explicitly derived from Gen 1–3.38 However, in Haer. 1.18.1–4 Irenaeus focuses more precisely on the details the Marcosian theory of the creation. According to Irenaeus, they assert the mother of the Demiurge used him as an instrument and, in continuity with middle-platonic metaphysics, created the visible world after the pattern of invisible beings. To validate this theological perspective, the Marcosians continue to utilize gametria and organize a complex set of passages bound by common numerological references that typify the Tetrad, Decad, Deodecad, and Triacontad. Irenaeus characterizes this method of exegesis as progressive and evolving, saying that they "transform" (transformantes) the writings from the prophets as they regularly amend their myth.39 In addition, according to Irenaeus, the identification of this system is based upon a concept of inspiration where the Spirit of these realities communicates through Moses.
When they turned to Gen 1–3, Irenaeus reports that the Marcosians find a type of the Tetrad in the opening verses with the four terms: "God and Beginning, the heavens and the earth" (Deum et principium, caelum et terram,
Gen 1:1).40 A second Tetrad, which is an offspring of the first, is found in the terms of Gen 1:2: "deep" (abyssum), "darkness" (tenebras), "water" (aquae), and "Spirit" (Spiritus).41 In Haer. 1.18.2, a Tetrad is found in the formation of the sun on the fourth day in Gen 1:14–19, the colors of the curtains of the tabernacle in Exod 26:1/36:8, and the four rows of stones on the priestly robe in Exod 28:17.
38 Cf. Haer. 1.17.1–2.
39 Haer. 1.18.1. cf. Haer. 1.21.5. Steenberg, Irenaeus, 27; Dunderberg, "The School of Valentinus,"
83.
40 Haer. 1.18.1. cf. "Beginning" in Haer. 1.14.1.
41 Haer. 1.18.1.
chapter 2 They also identify the same kind of numerology in Gen 1:3–12 that records the Decad in the ten terms: light, the day, the night, the firmament, the evening, the morning, the dry land, the sea, the plants, and the trees.42 Similarly,
Gen 1:14–27 contains a representation of the Dodecad with the terms: sun, moon, stars, seasons, years, sea monsters, fishes, reptiles, fowl, quadrupeds, beasts, and humans.43 The whole of Gen 1:1–27, therefore, speaks of the cohort of thirty aeons known as the Triacontad.44
Implanted within these numerical calculations, Irenaeus also reports that the Marcosians interpret the "invisible" (invisibile) nature of the Tetrad through the description of the invisible and unformed earth in Gen 1:2. This brief reference is distinct from the gametria applied to Gen 1:2. In this instance the language of 'invisible" is retained not for its numerological value, but in the normal spiritual sense. They apply the characteristics of the invisible and formless earth to the nature of the Tetrad, so that the language "invisible" refers directly to the nature of the divine beings, not their quantity. This kind of spiritual reading isolates the characteristic of invisibility from the context of the creation account, and applies it to the deities within their myth.
The same numerology applies to the formation of humankind and the various components that comprise the human anatomy. The human person is created in the "image of the Power on high" (imaginem superioris Virtutis), echoing Gen 1:26.45 The human form possesses one fountain in the brain out of which flows "four powers" (virtutes IIII), echoing to the rivers flowing from Eden in Gen 2:10. These powers numerologically reflect the Tetrad, as do the four senses of sight, sound, hearing, and taste (they disregard the sense of touch). The Ogdoad is also witnessed in two ears, two eyes, two nostrils and double sense of taste (that is bitter and sweet). The Decad is found in the ten fingers, and the Duodecad in the twelve members of the body, which together represent the Triacontad. The intertextual relationship between these texts is again located in their numeric associations and their unified representation of the Triacontad, and Irenaeus suggests these passages are merely exemplary of their gematria.46 He reports a series of other passages they use in continuity with these numerical representations including: Gen 6–50, Exod 24–36,
42 Haer. 1.18.2.
43 Haer. 1.18.2.
44 Apart from this context and an implicit echo in Haer. 5.30.4, Irenaeus never mentions any passage from Gen 1:6–25, which is remarkable given the importance of the days of creation for other second century fathers such as Theophilus. For an explanation of Theophilus' understanding of creation see Steenberg, Irenaeus, 88–92.
45 Haer. 1.18.2. cf. Haer. 2.pf.1.
46 Haer. 1.18.1.