Introduction

Introduction Christoph Markschies and Einar Thomassen The movement referred to, chiefly by outsiders, as “the Valentinians” (οἱ ἀπὸ Οὐαλεντίνου, Valentiniani) holds a key position in the history of emergent Christianity. For one thing, this is the group that Bishop Irenaeus singles out as the most dangerous of all the “heretics” in his massive Adversus haereses (ca. 180), a work which is also the earliest substantial exposition of Christian theology. The “heresy” of the Valentinians thus serves as the foil against which Christian “orthodoxy” is first systematically delineated. The correct beliefs about the nature of God and his relation to creation, about Christ and the in- carnation, about salvation history and the Church, about apostolic authority and succession, and about the canon of Scripture, were all defined and elabo- rated by Irenaeus as a reaction against the tenets of his Valentinian antagonists. Secondly, the Valentinian “heresy” is defined by Irenaeus as consisting in a false claim to gnosis, as is illustrated by the full title of his work, Exposure and Refutation of the Falsely Called Knowledge (Ἔλεγχος καὶ ἀνατροπὴ τῆς ψευδωνύμου γνώσις). Though a number of other groups and individual teachers are surveyed in Book I of this work as proponents of the gnostic “heresy,” it is the Valentinians that are at the centre of attention and receive by far the most extensive treatment; the others are portrayed as the Valentinians’ “predeces- sors.” An effect of Irenaeus’ perspective was that Valentinianism came to be regarded by scholarship as the prototypical example of “Gnosticism,” the defin- ing yardstick against which other religious phenomena of later Antiquity (and beyond) could be measured as to the extent of their being “Gnostic” or not. Thirdly, regardless of the indirect influence of Valentinianism on the devel- opment of “orthodox” Christian theology, and its crucial importance for the construction of “Gnosticism” as a category, the Valentinians represent a significant branch of ancient Christianity in their own right. The attention given to them by Irenaeus is in itself an indication of their relative prominence in the multifaceted landscape of Christian groups in the second century. In the early third century Tertullian describes them as frequentissimum collegium … inter haereticos (Val. 1.1). Of all the groups branded as “heretical” by the proponents of emerging “orthodoxy,” none (except, perhaps, the Marcionites, and, later, the Manichaeans) are as tangible as the Valentinians in terms of the extent of surviving evidence, doctrinal coherence, the possession of a distinct socio- religious identity, and continuity over time. In the late fourth century we still hear about “Valentinians” – in Syria, where they were victims of attacks by © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004414815_002 2 Markschies and Thomassen proponents of various forms of so-called orthodoxy.1 Thus, Valentinianism was more than a movement that flowered for a brief period in the time of Irenaeus and Tertullian; it was a distinct type of Christian community in Antiquity, an ekklesia whose history stretched over at least two and a half centuries. The Valentinians have been the object of scholarly attention ever since Erasmus published the first printed edition of the Latin Irenaeus in 1526 with a brief introduction. Fundamental work collecting the sources and synthesis- ing the ancient evidence on Valentinianism was made above all by Grabe in his Spicilegium in 1700,2 and by Massuet in his magnificent edition of Irenaeus from 1710.3 The 18th and 19th centuries saw a proliferation of histories of “heresies” and works on “Gnosis” and “Gnosticism” in which Valentinianism inevi- tably played a prominent part – from Mosheim over Neander, Matter, Baur, Lipsius and Harnack, to Hilgenfeld and de Faye.4 Whereas the earlier works written during this period typically take the form of encyclopaedic assemblies of materials paraphrased from the Church fathers, embedded in historical speculations and philosophical musings, the scholarship of Lipsius, Harnack and Hilgenfeld represented a new phase of source-critical awareness. Their dominant approach was that of Quellenforschung,5 so typical of German philo- logical scholarship during this period. Although the conclusions drawn based on this approach often turned out to be less compelling than its practitioners had in mind, its general effects were nonetheless highly important. In the first place, the composition and internal coherence of the works of the heresiolo- gists were scrutinised in a far more critical manner than had previously been the case; secondly, much greater attention was given to the variations between the sources on the “heresies” themselves. For the study of Valentinianism, Irenaeus remained the main witness, but other sources were intensively examined as 1 Julian, Ep. 40 Wright: Valentinians violently attacked by Arians in Edessa in 362; Ambrose, Epp. extra coll. 1 and 1a (=40 and 41 Maur.): “orthodox” Christians torching an assembly house of the Valentinians in a Syrian village on August 1, 388. 2 Grabe, Spicilegium, vol. 2, 43–58 (Valentinus), 68–80 (Ptolemaeus), 80–117 (Heracleon). 3 Sancti Irenaei … Contra Hæreses Libri Quinque. Massuet’s edition, including his valuable in- troductions, was reproduced by Migne as volume 7 of the Patrologia Graeca. 4 For Mosheim, see especially Versuch; De rebus christianorum; Neander, Genetische Entwickelung; Matter, Histoire critique; Baur, Die christliche Gnosis. For Lipsius, his articles “Valentinus,” and “Valentinus und seine Schule” (a revised version of the former) are of special interest here; Harnack made his most influential contribution on the topic in his Dogmengeschichte (1st ed. 1886; 4th ed. 1909); cf. vol. 1, 243–92 of the last edition; Hilgenfeld, Ketzergeschichte; De Faye, Gnostiques et gnosticisme. For a discussion of the history of re- search, see Markschies, “Alte und neue Texte.” 5 Especially significant here are Lipsius, Zur Quellenkritik, and Quellen der ältesten Ketzergeschichte; Harnack, Zur Quellenkritik; “Zur Quellenkritik.”.

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