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Except That Christ Never Said: “And the Angel That Spoke in Me Said to Me”» (De Carne Christi, 14.30-41)1 Tertullian, Ebionism and an Ancient Perception of Jesus

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Except That Christ Never Said: “And the Angel That Spoke in Me Said to Me”» (De Carne Christi, 14.30-41)1 Tertullian, Ebionism and an Ancient Perception of Jesus Claire CLIVAZ University of Lausanne «EXCEPT THAT CHRIST NEVER SAID: “AND THE ANGEL THAT SPOKE IN ME SAID TO ME”» (DE CARNE CHRISTI, 14.30-41)1 TERTULLIAN, EBIONISM AND AN ANCIENT PERCEPTION OF JESUS RÉSUMÉ Le passage du De carne Christi 14,30-41 n’a pas encore reçu toute l’attention qu’il mérite de la part de la recherche au cours du dernier demi-siècle, pour au moins deux raisons. Premièrement, l’édition anglaise de référence, Ernest Evans (1956), ne fait pas complètement justice au texte latin de ce passage, mieux rendu dans l’édition française de Jean-Pierre Mahé (1975). Deuxièmement, Tertullien y atteste que l’ébionisme considérait Jésus comme habité par un ange, un point de vue qui ne correspond pas aux reconstructions de l’ébionisme telles que proposées par la majo- rité des chercheurs. Une analyse détaillée de ce texte montre pourtant qu’il repré- sente bel et bien un indice supplémentaire pour établir l’ancienneté d’une telle per- ception de Jésus. ABSTRACT De carne Christi 14.30-41 has not been given the attention it deserves by scholars over the last 50 years for at least two reasons. First, the widely used 1956 English edition by Ernest Evans does not accurately convey the meaning of the Latin text of this passage: the 1975 French edition by Jean-Pierre Mahé is better. Secondly, Tertullian offers evidence of Ebionite teaching that Jesus was inhabited by an angel, an understanding that is not congruent with many current scholarly recon- structions of Ebionism. A careful analysis of Tertullian’s passage shows that it represents a supplementary clue to establish the antiquity of such a perception of Jesus. 1. In referring to the De carne Christi, the line numbers of the latest English edition are followed (see Ernest EVANS (ed.), Tertullian’s Treatise on the Incarnation, London: SPCK, 1956). Revue des études juives, 169 (3-4), juillet-décembre 2010, pp. 287-311. doi: 10.2143/REJ.169.3.2061160 993578_REJ_3-4_2010_02_.indd3578_REJ_3-4_2010_02_.indd 228787 117/01/117/01/11 009:439:43 288 DE CARNE CHRISTI, 14.30-41 1. Tertullian, Ebionite Christology and Forgetting2 The importance of forgetting in the historical process has become more and more important in present historical studies and thinking. We can evoke the last monograph of the French philosopher Paul Ricœur3, or the works of the Dutch and German historians Frank Ankersmit4 and Jan Assmann5. Ass- mann notably integrates the concept of “cultural forgetting” in the historical process, a concept that he borrows from the “cultural latency” of Freudian theory6. This cultural forgetting can sometimes mean a simple and complete rejection of others by the destruction of their traces. However, it can also be translated in a more subtle and nevertheless effective form, when the sources carefully keep elements which the authors view as a counter-image of their own identity. There occurs a particular kind of cultural forgetting that func- tions as a “normative inversion”, according to Assmann: “Normative inver- sion keeps a memory of the other alive because this image is needed for contradistinctive self-definition. […] But this memory is not an image of the other religion; it is only a counter-image of one’s own”7. The topic of forgetting and counter-image has not yet been given due consideration in studies of early Christianity8. This paper seeks to demon- strate that this dimension needs to be taken into account in order to under- stand better what is at stake in a text, and to derive more information from the ancient sources. The example that I will analyze in this sense stands in the De carne Christi 14 — the Treatise on the Incarnation — by Tertullian, a passage that mentions “Ebion”9 and claims to refer to Ebionite ideas. My 2. My thanks are due to Prof. John Gager for his useful advices, and to Dr Jenny Read- Heimerdinger for proof-reading the English text of this article. 3. See Paul RICŒUR, Memory, History, Forgetting, Kathleen BLAMEY, David PELLAUER (trans.), Chicago: University Press, 2004 (French edition: 2000). On the level of history of ideas, it is Friedrich Nietzsche who was the first — and for a long time the only one — to think of history and forgetting as interrelated concepts (see particularly Unzeitgemässe Betra- chtungen, II, edited in Friedrich NIETZSCHE, Werke in drei Bänden, Bd. 1, München: C. Hanser, 19737). After Nietzsche, it was only at the end of the 20th century that Western thinking dared again linking forgetting and history. 4. See Frank ANKERSMIT, “The Sublime Dissociation of the Past: Or How to Be(come) What One is no Longer”, History and Theory 40/3 (2001), pp. 295-323. 5. See Jan ASSMANN, Moses the Egyptian. The Memory of Egypt Western Monotheism, Cambridge MA/London: Harvard University Press, 1997. 6. See ASSMANN, Moses the Egyptian. The Memory of Egypt Western Monotheism, p. 215. 7. Ibid., p. 216. 8. But see for example François BOVON, “The Apostolic Memories in Early Christianity”, in ID., Studies in Early Christianity (WUNT 161), Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003, pp. 1-16. 9. I agree with the majority point of view that such a person, named “Ebion”, is a fictitious person extrapolated by the apologetic Fathers from “Ebionism” (see for example Eva SCHULZ- FLÜGEL, Paul MATTEI (eds.), Tertullien. Le voile des vierges (De uirginibus uelandis) (SC 424), 993578_REJ_3-4_2010_02_.indd3578_REJ_3-4_2010_02_.indd 228888 117/01/117/01/11 009:439:43 DE CARNE CHRISTI, 14.30-41 289 contention is that Tertullian gives us here a particular insight into Ebionism, but also provokes a “cultural forgetting”, because he transmits only partially the Ebionite ideas to which he refers. Ernest Evans offered the last Latin critical edition of the De carne Christi in English speaking scholarship (1956). Here is his translation of 14.30-41: So then, even as [the Son] is made less than the angels while clothed with manhood, even so he is not less if clothed with an angel. This view of the mat- ter could have suited Ebion who determines that Jesus is a bare man, merely of the seed of David, and therefore not also the Son of God — though clearly he speaks of himself in somewhat higher terms than the prophets use concern- ing themselves — so as to state (dicatur) that an angel was in him (in illo) in the same way as in Zechariah, for example (quemadmodum in aliquo Zach- aria): though we object that the words, And the angel that spoke in me said unto me, were never used by Christ. Nor indeed was that habitual expression of all the prophets, Thus saith the Lord: for he was himself the Lord, declaring openly and on his own authority, But I say unto you. What more do we need, when we hear Isaiah crying out, Not an angel nor a delegate, but the Lord himself hath saved them? 10 Even though present research is preoccupied with a correct definition and perception of the Ebionites, this passage has not really been taken into account11. Tertullian is indeed generally considered as depending on Ire- naeus12 “in everything he says about Ebionite Christology, except that he ascribes it to ‘Hebion’”, as Oskar Skarsaune asserts13. But Skarsaune designates as another exception the passage of De carne Christi 14.30-41: “On one point, however, Tertullian seems to go beyond Irenaeus. He seems to attest to Ebionite Christology of the end-time-prophet type”14. Analyzing Paris: Cerf, 1997, p. 221, footnote on chapter 6.1; Oskar SKARSAUNE, “The Ebionites”, in Jewish Believers in Jesus: The Early Centuries, Oskar SKARSAUNE, Reidar HVALVIK (eds), Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2007, pp. 419-462; here p. 421. Consequently, I write “Ebion” in this article. 10. TERTULLIAN, De carne Christi 14.30-41 (EVANS (ed.), Tertullian’s Treatise on the Incar- nation, pp. 51-53). 11. For example, the passage is quoted in footnotes, but not analyzed by Simon C. MIMOUNI, Le judéo-christianisme ancien. Essais historiques (Patrimoines), Paris: Cerf, 1998, p. 124, note 1, and p. 132, note 3. But see the exception of the attitude of Barbel with respect to the passage expressed in 1941: Joseph BARBEL, Christos Angelos. Die Anschauung von Christus als Bote und Engel in der gelehrten und volkstümlichen Literatur des christlichen Altertums. Zugleich ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Ursprungs und der Fortdauer des Arian- ismus (Theophania 3), Bonn: Peter Hanstein Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1941, pp. 285-286. 12. See for example EVANS (ed.), Tertullian’s Treatise on the Incarnation, p. 143; A.F.J. KLIJN – G.J. REININK, Patristic Evidence for Jewish-Christian Sects (Supplements to Novum Testamentum 36), Leiden: Brill, 1973, p. 21. 13. SKARSAUNE, “The Ebionites”, p. 431. 14. Ibid., p. 431. 993578_REJ_3-4_2010_02_.indd3578_REJ_3-4_2010_02_.indd 228989 117/01/117/01/11 009:439:43 290 DE CARNE CHRISTI, 14.30-41 the text briefly, Skarsaune concludes: “Tertullian may have had information additional to what is contained in the preserved writings of Irenaeus, but we cannot be sure”15. If this author remains prudent in his evaluation, it was not the case of Klijn and Reinink in 1973. They vigorously refused to see any special information from Tertullian about Ebionism in De carne Christi 14.30-41: This passage has been taken as a proof that Tertullian wishes to show that Ebion considered Jesus to be an angel16. But this conclusion cannot be accepted. […] The whole passage is based on a suggestion made by Tertullian who obvi- ously started from his knowledge that Ebion wished to prove that Jesus was a prophet. Tertullian says that this could be proved with reference to Zech 1.14, provided one accepts that Christ has assumed the nature of an angel.
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