1 A. Hilhorst, Rev. of P. Bettiolo, A. G. Kossova, C. Leonardi, E. Norelli, and L. Perrone (eds.), Ascensio Isaiae, CSCO SA 7.8 (Turnhout 1995): VigChr 54 (2000) 111-4; on the text see the critical edito maior: Ascensio Isaiae: Textus, ed. Paolo Bettiolo et al., CChr.SA 7 (Turnhout, 1995), together with the substantial commentary by Enrico Norelli, Ascensio Isaiae: Commentarius, CChr.SA 8 (Turnhout, 1995).

2 See the proximity, indicated by Darrell D. Hannah, The Ascension of Isaiah and Docetic Christology: VigChr 53 (1999) 165-96, 168.

3 A. Hilhorst, Rev. (2000), 113; indeed, parallels between the Ascension and, for example, Rev. and other apocalyptic and prophetic literature have been noted by Richard Bauckham, The Wor-ship of Jesus in Apocalyptic Christianity: NTS 27 (1980/1) 322-41, 323.

Give and Take amongst Second Century Authors The Ascension of Isaiah, the Epistle of the Apostles

and Marcion of Sinope

Markus Vinzent, London

AbstrAct

Christian authors from the outgoing 2nd c. onwards often paint a picture of a dark age of Christianity when the unity of the church was threatened by the discordant multitude of heresies (Iren., Adv. haer. I 10f.). This paper challenges this view by relating two apocryphal texts to one of the ‘arch-heretics’, Marcion of Sinope, and also drawing on Matthew, Luke and John to show how mutually Christian prophets, teachers and apos-tles borrowed from each other to develop their own Christian perspectives further.

‘The Ascension of Isaiah shares the features typical of so many apocryphal writings. Its author is unknown, its date is under dispute, it has come down to us in many languages, completely or in fragments, the original language is controversial and, last but not least, opinions are divided as to the religious milieu in which it originated: was it Jewish or Christian?’1 We could add more open questions, but confine ourselves to just one: Is there a potential relation-ship to Marcion of Sinope?2

To answer this question, we will draw on another apocryphal text, the Epistle of the Apostles, and with regards to the Ascension of Isaiah concentrate on the passages in III 13-IV 22 and IX and XI, without pre-empting whether or not the co-editor of the editio maior and commentator Enrico Norelli is right in his ada-mant defence of his ‘minority position’ with regards to the Christian origin of the work who ‘while accepting the composite character of the work, feels it to be Christian in origin and written in Greek by a group of early Christian prophets’.3

Studia Patristica L, 00-00.© Peeters Publishers, 2010.

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4 On the use of the anti-Jewish Testimonia aduersus Iudaeos and the Prayer of Joseph see Vacher Burch, The Literary Unity of the Ascensio Isaiae: JThS 20 (1919) 17-23.

5 Iren., Adv. haer. I 27,3: ‘Abel autem et Enoch et Noe et reliquos iustos… non participasse salutem’.

6 See Tert., Adv. Marc. I 8,1; 9,1; V 16,3.

Not only is there, indeed, the possibility that ‘Christians could quite well use Old Testament subject matter’, but if we look at a number of anti-Marcionite authors, such as Justin Martyr, the extensive use of Jewish and anti-Jewish writings and traditions may already be an indication of a particular position.4 In the 140th in Rome, Marcion had denied the appropriateness of Jewish Scrip-tures for the Christian community, and stressed the strict antithesis between an old and a new testament, between Judaism and Christianity. For Marcion, not even ‘Abel, nor Henoch, nor Noah and all other just people participate in salvation.’5 Christ had not been foretold by the Prophets because they even did not know about him and none of the Prophets right through to John the Baptist had any foreknowledge of Christ whatsoever. Instead the Saviour came unex-pectedly.6 In contrast, Justin insisted that Christ’s earthly life was predicted and typologically pre-figured in the Jewish Scriptures and especially in the Prophets. It was the Logos himself who had spoken about himself through the Prophets as a kind of enfleshment.

In the Ascension we are, indeed, faced with a revelation that takes its author-ity from one of the major prophets, if not from the prophet who was most often referred to by Christians, Isaiah. Isaiah listened to the voice of the Holy Spirit and ‘the vision which the holy Isaiah saw was not from this world but from the world which is hidden from the flesh’ (AscI VI 15). Surpassing Paul’s vision of 2Corinthians where he only reached the third heaven, Isaiah ascends to the seventh (AscI): ‘I indeed say unto thee, Isaiah: No man about to return into a body of that world has ascended or seen what thou seest or perceived what thou hast perceived and what thou wilt see’ (AscI VIII 11). Isaiah explicitly states that he saw ‘the holy Abel and all the righteous’ in the seventh heaven, and also that he ‘saw Enoch and all who were with him, stript of the garments of the flesh, and… in their garments of the upper world, and they were like angels, standing there in great glory’, but he does not simply contradict Marcion’s oppoinion, but adds that Enoch and those with him ‘sat not on their thrones, nor were their crowns of glory on them’ (AscI IX 8-10).

The Ascension opens with a historical reference: ‘And it came to pass in the twenty-sixth year of the reign of Hezekiah, king of Judah that he called Man-asseh his son. Now he was his only one. And he called him into the presence of Isaiah the son of Amoz the prophet, and into the presence of Josab the son of Isaiah, in order to deliver unto him the words of righteousness which the king himself had seen’ (AscI I 1f.). This opening passage which reminds of Luke 3:1 gives a few hints? Manasseh was the longest reigning king of Judah,

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7 See the explicit reference to 2Kings in AscI 2:6: ‘And the rest of the acts, behold they are written in the book of the Kings of Judah and Israel’.

and the report about him in the Second Book of Kings referred to by the Ascen-sion is more than a harsh criticism:

21:2 He did evil in the sight of the Lord and committed the same horrible sins practiced by the nations whom the Lord drove out from before the Israelites. 21:3 He rebuilt the high places that his father Hezekiah had destroyed; he set up altars for Baal and made an Asherah pole just like King Ahab of Israel had done. He bowed down to all the stars in the sky and worshiped them. 21:4 He built altars in the Lord’s temple, about which the Lord had said, “Jerusalem will be my home.” 21:5 In the two courtyards of the Lord’s temple he built altars for all the stars in the sky. 21:6 He passed his son through the fire and practiced divination and omen reading. He set up a ritual pit to conjure up underworld spirits, and appointed magicians to supervise it. He did a great amount of evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking him to anger. 21:7 He put an idol of Asherah he had made in the temple, about which the Lord had said to David and to his son Solomon: “This temple in Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, will be my permanent home. 21:8 I will not make Israel again leave the land I gave to their ancestors, provided that they carefully obey all I commanded them, the whole law my servant Moses ordered them to obey.” 21:9 But they did not obey, and Manasseh misled them so that they sinned more than the nations whom the Lord had destroyed from before the Israelites.21:10 So the Lord announced through his servants the prophets: 21:11 “King Manasseh of Judah has committed horrible sins. He has sinned more than the Amorites before him and has encouraged Judah to sin by worshiping his disgusting idols. 21:12 So this is what the Lord God of Israel says, ‘I am about to bring disaster on Jerusalem and Judah. The news will reverberate in the ears of those who hear about it. 21:13 I will destroy Jerusalem the same way I did Samaria and the dynasty of Ahab. I will wipe Jerusalem clean, just as one wipes a plate on both sides. 21:14 I will abandon this last remaining tribe among my people and hand them over to their enemies; they will be plundered and robbed by all their enemies, 21:15 because they have done evil in my sight and have angered me from the time their ancestors left Egypt right up to this very day!’” 21:16 Furthermore Manasseh killed so many innocent people, he stained Jerusalem with their blood from end to end, in addition to encouraging Judah to sin by doing evil in the sight of the Lord.21:17 The rest of the events of Manasseh’s reign and all his accomplishments, as well as the sinful acts he committed, are recorded in the scroll called the Annals of the Kings of Judah. 21:18 Manasseh passed away and was buried in his palace garden, the garden of Uzzah, and his son Amon replaced him as king (2Kings 21:2-18; 2Chronicles 33:1-20).

The introduction of the Ascension refers to the scenario depicted in 2Kings,7 not to the smoothened version of 2Chronicles where Manasseh at the end of his life humbled himself and converted to the God of Israel. According to 2Kings which the AscI recounts and broadens, Isaiah had been called by God ‘to deliver the words of righteousness’ in the last year of Hezekiah’s reign, when

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8 On some paralles to texts from Nag Hammadi see Andrew K. Helmbold, Gnostic Elements in the ‘Ascension of Isaiah’: New Testament Studies 18 (1971/2) 222-6.

9 See AscI II 9.

Manasseh was designated and probably began to co-reign with his father. The hint at this scenario sets the tone of the Ascension: In conflating then and now, the text is a prophetic, highly critical, if not dismissive divine message against the state the Jews are in. The temple has been turned into a site of pagan worship, a hint at the Roman destruction of the temple in 70 A.D. as well as the trans-formation of Jerusalem into Aelia Capitolina after 130 A.D. where divination and omen reading were practiced, a city; the ban on any Jew living in this city was to last until the 4th c. A.D. In 2Kings 21:8 we are also given the reason for this harsh punishment. God’s promise not to make ‘Israel again leave the land’ which he ‘gave to their ancestors’ was conditional on the provision ‘that they carefully obey all’ that God ‘commanded them, the whole law’ which ‘Moses ordered them to obey’.

The Ascension is not against the Jewish Scriptures, although it is critical of the Jews. With reference to the prophet Isaiah and through him to 2Kings, the author uses these Scriptures for his own – Christian – purpose. He even brings forward a new excuse for Manasseh’s wrong-doings. It is not, as in 2Chronicles the remorse of the king and his return to the God of Israel, but a lengthy expla-nation follows that Manasseh became subservient to ‘Beliar’, ‘the angel of law-lessness, who is the ruler of this world’ (AscI II 4), and resided in Manasseh (AscI I 9). Even more, the plot develops into a cosmic drama between Beliar and Isaiah because of the prophet’s vision – the vision of the Beloved which starts off the Christological part of the Ascension.8 Irrespective to what extent the author or redactor of our present version(s) used an older text or earlier traditions – we know he referred to and used 2Kings and Isaiah –, the work as we read it forms an apocalyptic text where the Christian character runs through. The work in its present form could have been a contribution to the debate about Jewish-Christian propheticism and the use of the Jewish Scriptures, instigated by Marcion.

Similar to Justin, the Ascension insists that the Saviour had been announced by himself through the prophets: The one who is ‘going forth from the seventh heaven had been made known’ through Isaiah but also other prophets men-tioned in the Ascension (Miha, Ananias, Joel, Habakkuk, Jasub9). The author does not entirely disagree with Marcion’s criticism of prophets, as he mentions false-prophets, but he asserts, they were Samaritans like Belchira who ‘dwelt in the region of Bethlehem, and was an adherent of Manasseh’ and ‘prophesied falsely in Jerusalem, and many belonging to Jerusalem were confederate with him’ (AscI III 1). Belchira even plays prophets against prophets and points at Isaiah as if he were critical of Moses claiming: ‘I see more than Moses, the prophet’, because when Moses said: ‘No man can see God and live’ (Ex. 33:20),

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10 See E. Norelli, Ascensio Isaiae: Commentarius (1995), 169-236.

Isaiah answered: ‘I have seen God and behold I live’ (Is. 6:5) (AscI III 8f.). Then, Isaiah also spoke against Jerusalem and called it ‘Gomorrah’ (Is. 6:10). The reason why Belchira was ‘in great wrath against Isaiah’ is identical with Marcion’s rejection of the prophets, namely Isaiah’s foreknowledge and vision of the arrival of the Saviour. Isaiah had ‘made known’ through his vision the ‘going forth of the Beloved from the seventh heaven’, his descent and trans-formation into the likeness of man’ (AscI III 13).

As with the prophetic announcement of the ‘horrible sins’ of the King, the ‘disaster on Jerusalem and Judah’, the ‘destruction of Jerusalem’, the abandonment of the ‘last remaining tribe’ among God’s people, actions which are interpreted as God’s own in 2Kings (and the passage ends with a word on Manasseh’s kill-ing of innocent people, staining Jerusalem, messages which must have reso-nated in any Jewish Christian ear), the Beloved’s saving actions are foreknown and foretold by the prophet(s) in the Ascension – the contrary to what Marcion proclaimed. In addition, the mention of Manasseh in the opening of the Ascen-sion may be a hint at Jesus’ genealogy in Matthew (1:10), a gospel that Marcion did not use.

1. The Descent of the Beloved (AscI III 13-31)10

Isaiah recounts his vision of the descent of the Beloved (AscI III 13-31):

‘The going forth of the Beloved from the seventh heaven had been made known, and His transformation and His descent and the likeness into which He should be transformed (that is) the likeness of man, and the persecution wherewith he should be persecuted, and the torturers wherewith the children of Israel should torture Him, and the coming of His twelve disciples, and the teaching, and that He should before the sabbath be crucified upon the tree, and should be crucified together with wicked men, and that He should be buried in the sepulchre, 14. And the twelve who were with Him should be offended because of Him: and the watch of those who watched the sepulchre: 15. And the descent of the angel of the Christian Church, which is in the heavens, whom He will summon in the last days. 16. And that (Gabriel) the angel of the Holy Spirit, and Michael, the chief of the holy angels, on the third day will open the sepul-chre: 17. And the Beloved sitting on their shoulders will come forth and send out His twelve disciples; 18. And they will teach all the nations and every tongue of the Resur-rection of the Beloved, and those who believe in His cross will be saved, and in His ascension into the seventh heaven whence He came: 19. And that many who believe in Him will speak through the Holy Spirit: 20. And many signs and wonders will be wrought in those days. 21. And afterwards, on the eve of His approach, His disciples will forsake the teachings of the Twelve Apostles, and their faith, and their love and their purity. 22. And there will be much contention on the eve of [His advent and] His approach. 23. And in those

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11 National Library of Turin (G VII 15f.); on this codex see Eberhard Nestle, Einführung in das Griechische Neue Testament, 4th ed. (Göttingen, 1923), 17.19; Bruce M. Metzger, The Early Versions of the New Testament: Their Origin, Transmission, and Limitations (Oxford, 1977), 315f.; on the Gospel of Peter and Mark 16:3 in the Codex Pobiensis (k) see M. Vinzent, History does not always tell stories: What about the Resurrection of Christ?, in: La Narrativa Cristiana Antica: Codici Narrativi, Strutture Formali, Schemi Retorici, Studia Ephemeridis Augustinianum 50 (Rome, 1995), 133-55.

12 So already C. Schmidt, Gespräche Jesu mit seinen Jüngern nach der Auferstehung. Ein katholisch-apostolisches Sendschreiben des 2. Jahrhunderts, TU 43 (Leipzig, 1919), 195.

13 Iren., Adv haer. I 23.

days many will love office, though devoid of wisdom. 24. And there will be many lawless elders, and shepherds dealing wrongly by their own sheep, and they will ravage (them) owing to their not having holy shepherds. 25. And many will change the honour of the garments of the saints for the garments of the covetous, and there will be much respect of persons in those days and lovers of the honour of this world. 26. And there will be much slander and vainglory at the approach of the Lord, and the Holy Spirit will withdraw from many. 27. And there will not be in those days many prophets, nor those who speak trustworthy words, save one here and there in divers places, 28. On account of the spirit of error and fornication and of vainglory, and of covetousness, which shall be in those, who will be called servants of that One and in those who will receive that One. 29. And there will be great hatred in the shepherds and elders towards each other. 30. For there will be great jealousy in the last days; for every one will say what is pleasing in his own eyes. 31. And they will make of none effect the prophecy of the prophets which were before me, and these my visions also will they make of none effect, in order to speak after the impulse of their own hearts’.

The Ascension sees the descent of the Beloved as a transformational journey through heavens until he reaches the likeness of man. The Israelites are described as his torturers. Special mention is made of the Twelve. The Risen is pictured as sitting on the schoulders of the angels Gabriel and Michael who carry him out of the sepulchre. This Resurrection scenery, as is easy to recog-nise, does not follow any of the canonical gospels, but shares several features with three other early Christian texts which most probably date from the second century, too: the Epistle of the Apostles (EpAp), the Gospel of Peter (GP), and an addition to Mark 16:3 in the Codex Bobiensis (k),11 although only the EpAp gives us additional parallels to the birth of Christ.

2. The Epistle of the Apostles

Let us look at EpAp. The epistle is fictitiously written against ‘false apostles’, ‘Simon and Cerinthus’ (EpAp 1). Simon Magus represents a Samaritan type of Christianity in Acts (Acts 8:9ff.) and Cerinthus was seen as the rival of the apostle John in Asia Minor.12 Especially Simon was soon accounted for as arch-heretic, ‘from whom all sorts of heresies derive their origin’,13 and most

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14 On Cerinthus see the excursus in: C. Schmidt, Gespräche Jesu mit seinen Jüngern nach der Auferstehung (1919), 403-52.

15 On the descending dove, see also Clem. Alex., Exc. ex Theod. 16; on the Basilidians see Clem. Alex., Strom. II 38.

16 Iren., Adv. haer. I 26; see the conflicting information in Epiph., Pan. 28,6,1 according to which Cerinthus believed: ‘Christ suffered and was crucified, but has not yet risen again, but that he will rise, when the general resurrection of the dead takes place’, potentially identifying the Cerinthians with Paul’s opponents in Corinth (1Cor. 15:29), see M. Myllykoski, Cerinthus, in: Antti Marjanen and and Petri Luomanen (eds.), A Companion to Second-Century Christian ‘Heretics’, SVigChr (Leiden, and Boston, 2005), 213-46, 219. Myllykoski also states (224) that on the basis of our scanty evidence (no mention of Cerinthus in Ignatius, Papias, Hegesippus, Justin!) ‘all attempts to uncover the historical Cerinthus’ is ‘hypothetical’.

17 See Barbara Aland, Marcion: Versuch einer neuen Interpretation: Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 70 (1973) 420-47, 428.

18 See Tert., Adv. Marc. III 8f.19 Potentially one of the reasons, why Hipp., Ref. VII 20.1 thinks of the link between Marcion

and Mark as this gospel lacks the birth story of Jesus.20 See Tert., Adv. Marc. III 2,2f.; I 19,2; Adolf Harnack, Marcion: Das Evangelium vom

fremden Gott. Eine Monographie zur Geschichte der Grundlegung der katholischen Kirche. Neue Studien zu Marcion (Leipzig, 1923. 21924 = Darmstadt, 1960), 185*; Matthias Klinghardt,

particularly stood for Marcion. As the author(s) of EpAp wanted to retain the fictitious apostolic authorship, they had to refer to ‘heretics’ known in apostolic times, not to those of the second century, contemporary to the writing of the Epistle, although Irenaeus described Cerinthus as teaching elements that remind one of Marcion:14

Cerinthus was ‘a man who was educated in the wisdom of the Egyptians’, and ‘taught that the world was not made by the primary God, but by a certain Power far separated from him, and at a distance from that Principality who is supreme over the universe, and ignorant of him who is above all. He represented Jesus as having not been born of a virgin, but as being the son of Joseph and Mary according to the ordinary course of human generation, while he nevertheless was more righteous, prudent, and wise than other men. Moreover, after his baptism, Christ descended upon him in the form of a dove from the Supreme Ruler,15 and that then he proclaimed the unknown Father, and performed miracles. But at last Christ departed from Jesus, and then Jesus suffered and rose again, while Christ remained impassible, inasmuch as he was a spiritual being.’16

From Irenaeus’ account we can see both the direct parallels and differences between Cerinthus and Marcion. They both distinguished between a non- creator God and a demiurge ‘far separated from’ the transcendant Principle ‘who is supreme over the universe’. The creating power and with him certainly the world that he created is ignorant of the transcendant God.17 To Cerinthus, however, Jesus was a fleshly entity, generated in a human generation by Joseph and Mary, whereas Marcion explicitly denied his human birth. Instead, Christ appeared in an angelic body,18 hence the gospel which Marcion used did not start as Luke today with the birth narrative,19 but with Christ’s appearance as an adult.20

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‘Gesetz’ bei Markion und Lukas, in: Dieter Sänger and Matthias Konradt (eds.), Das Gesetz im frühen Judentum und im Neuen Testament: Festschrift für Christoph Burchard zum 75. Geburtstag, NTOA 57 (Göttingen and Fribourg, 2006), 99-128, 105.

21 See B. Aland, Marcion: Versuch einer neuen Interpretation (1973), 439.22 Tert., Adv. Marc. III 24.23 See B. Aland, Marcion: Versuch einer neuen Interpretation (1973), 439.24 John E. Alsup, The Post-Resurrection Appearance Stories of the Gospel Tradition: A histo-

ry-of-tradition analysis with Text-Synopsis, Calwer Theologische Monographien 5 (Stuttgart, 1975), 128.

25 J. E. Alsup, The Post-Resurrection Appearance Stories (1975), 129; Alsup also points to the Freer Logion of Mark 16:14-8 which is scaling down the doubt of the disciples and grants them a retort.

Another important difference to Marcion derives from Cerinthus’ understand-ing of the cross and the Resurrection. To Cerinthus, as portrayed by Irenaeus, Christ was unable to suffer, only the body of Jesus was subjected to the cross, died and rose again, whereas Christ as a spiritual being was unaffected and ‘remained impassible’ – different to Marcion, to whom Jesus Christ was the spiritual entity that went through all those stations of betrayal, crucifixion and Resurrection, although in a divine manner as the supreme God himself rescued humans from the creator god by paying the price for the transgressions of the law which they could never fulfil and the sins accumulated by delivering Jesus Christ up to death:21 According to Marcion ‘it was the Christ of the transcend-ant God who was brought to the cross by the Creator’s powers and principalities that were hostile to him’, ‘the Christ who promises higher things was the one who alone proclaimed of a kingdom unheard of … because heavenly glory (has to be spoken of) by God himself.’22 It was divine kenosis that, according to Marcion, was absolutely new, and not foretold by any prophet.23

EpAp can be positioned within the early debates with Marcionites. The Epis-tle displays a complex osmosis through which authors were both influenced and provoked to respond by Marcionites. Throughout EpAp one can notice both an anti-Marcionite, and a Marcionite stand rather than an anti-Cerinthus position, especially in the epistle’s focus on ‘the human side of the appearance present, but also … that the disciples occupy center stage’.24 The disciples are no longer doubting as in Marcion who rejected the Twelve and only trusted the one and single apostle Paul. In EpAp the apostles ‘are pictured as probing, questioning and searching because of faith, i.e., to unite faith and understanding so that the future life and mission of the church might be firm and clear’.25

In addition, the Epistle reflects on Paul’s authority in relation to the other apostles. With a hint to Galatians first, before embarking on a broader discus-sion of Paul’s position, EpAp introduces itself: ‘The book has been written that you may be not flinch nor be troubled, and depart not from the word of the Gospel which you have heard’ (EpAp 1). Sounding like an echo that replaces the original voice, EpAp counters the departing from Paul’s Gospel by that from its own message, the gospel of the one creator God. The ending of the

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26 Tert., De carn. 4.27 Tert., Adv. Marc. III 11.

opening of the letter, therefore, takes specific reference to the ‘God, the Father, the Lord of the world’ (EpAp 1) and contradicts any distinction between God and a Lord of this world as in Marcion.

The counter-position is further confirmed by the epistle’s first argument which introduces Jesus Christ as the Son of the God, who is firmly described again as the Creator of heaven and earth. Christ ‘was sent of God, the Lord of the whole world, the maker and creator of it, who is named by all names, and high above all powers, Lord of lords, King of kings, Ruler of rulers, the heavenly one, that sits above the cherubim and seraphim at the right hand of the throne of the Father’ (EpAp 3).

There is no mention of Cerinthus’ distinction between Jesus and Christ. The Epistle re-affirms the Son’s part in the creation with reference to the first book of Moses, the fathers of old and the prophets, both idea and Jewish references rejected by Marcion who saw the saviour Christ as the separator between the darkness of the creation and the light of salvation. EpAp’s message: God ‘by his Word made the heavens, and formed the earth and that which is in it… the day and the night, the sun and the moon, did he establish, and the stars in the heaven: that did separate the light from the darkness… and by the fathers of old and the prophets is it declared, of whom the apostles preached, and whom the disciples did touch (Luke 24). In God, the Lord, the Son of God, do we believe, that he is the word become flesh: that of Mary the holy virgin he took a body, begotten of the Holy Ghost, not of the lust of the flesh, but by the will of God: that he was wrapped in swaddling clothes in Bethlehem (Luke 2:7) and made manifest, and grew up and came to ripe age, when also we beheld it’ (EpAp 3).

In contrast, Marcion was horrified from the flesh’s conception, growth in pregnancy and birth from the ‘sewer’ of a womb. He rejected ‘that workshop for bringing forth the noble animal which is man’ as a result of ‘the nastinesses of genital elements in the womb, the filthy curdling of moisture and blood, and of the flesh to be for nine months nourished on that same mire. Draw a picture of the womb getting daily more unmanageable, heavy, self-concerned, safe not even in sleep, uncertain in the whims of dislikes and appetites. Next go all out against the modesty of the travailing woman, a modesty which at least because of danger ought to be respected and because of its nature is sacred. You shud-der, of course, at the child passed out along with his afterbirth, and of course bedaubed with it. You think it shameful that he is straightened out with band-ages, that he is licked into shape with applications of oil, that he is beguiled by coddling’.26 As the ‘unclean and shameful torments of child-bearing’, so, after that, this product grows through ‘the dirty, troublesome, and ridiculous man-agement of the new-born child’.27 This flesh was not worth being put on by Christ, nor was it worth to be resurrected from death. The passage in Marcion’s

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28 Tert., De carn. 7.29 See Tert., Adv. Marc. V 10; De carn. 8.30 Matthias Klinghardt, Markion vs. Lukas: Plädoyer für die Wiederaufnahme eines alten

Falles: NTS 52 (2006) 484-513, 498-501.31 See M. Vinzent, Christ’s Resurrection: the Pauline Basis of Marcion’s Teaching: Studia

Patristica 31 (1997) 225-33; id., ‘Ich bin kein körperloses Geistwesen’: Zum Verhältnis von kßrugma Pétrou, ‘Doctrina Petri’, didaskalía Pétrou und IgnSm 3, in: R. M. Hübner and M. Vinzent, Monarchianismus im 2. Jahrhundert (1999), 241-86; id., Der Schluß des Lukasevangeliums bei Markion, in: Gerhard May and Katharina Greschat (eds.), Marcion und seine kirchengeschichtliche Wirkung. Marcion and His Impact on Church History: Vorträge der Internationalen Fachkonferenz zu Marcion, 15.-18. August 2001 Mainz, TU 150 (Berlin and New York, 2002), 79-94.

32 Older scholarship has assumed that EpAp relies on the canonical Gospels, although more recently, one has become more sceptical about the authoritative character of these Gospels, see Manfred Hornschuh, Studien zur Epistula Apostolorum, Patristische Texte und Studien 5 (Berlin, 1965), 9.

gospel version (see Luke 8:19-21) served him as proof that Christ resisted the temptation of making the link with an earthly mother or with sisters,28 so did Paul confirm the unbridgeable hiatus between an earthly creature and the heavenly Lord: ‘The first man is an earthly man, the second Lord is from heaven’ 1Cor. 15:47.29

EpAp refers to both sections of the gospel of Luke which were missing in Marcion’s gospel text, the end and beginning of Luke: Christ’s birth, youth and baptism and his ascension. To Marcion Christ had appeared under Tiberius in the same angelic flesh as he appeared to the disciples after his Resurrection (see Luke 24), an appearance which displayed the unbelief of the falsely called apostles. On that basis Marcion denied the fleshly birth from Mary and ridiculed the birthstory (the wrapping of the baby, his youth and upbringing), of which he obviously knew as a distortion of the gospel that he himself relied on.

The Marcionite counter-profile, not that of Cerinthus explains the EpAp’s men-tion of the birth story with the wrapping of the baby and Jesus’ growing up.30

According to EpAp the eleven apostles are its ‘authors’ and the Christian com-munities in the East, West, North and South its addressees. The apostles drew their revelation precisely from the encounter with the Risen Christ which Marcion had used to denigrate them: ‘We do write according as we have seen and heard and touched him (Luke 24), after he was risen from the dead: and how that he revealed to us things mighty and wonderful and true’ (EpAp 2). As above in chapter 3, already in EpAp 2 Marcion’s key Resurrection passage Luke 24:36-43 is used (‘touching the Lord’) in order to emphasise the belief of the apostles.31 The apos-tles saw, heard, touched him, and believed in what the Risen Lord did reveal.

EpAp expands on the Resurection and has a detailed story of the three women going to Jesus’ tomb. Having dealt with Marcion’s key Lukan passage 24:36-43, the narrative in EpAp now no longer follows Luke or any of our known gospels, but has parallels to all four, later canonical, texts Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and also to the Gospel of Peter.32 It seems from the loose

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33 Mark 16:1; Luke 24:1.34 Mark 16:10.35 John 20:11; EvPetr. 55.36 Luke 24:3.37 Luke 24:2; Mark 16:4.38 John 20:14f.; Mark 16:6.39 See John 20:15.40 Matth. 28:7.41 Matth. 28:10; John 20:17.42 Mark 16:11f.; Luke 24:11-41.43 John 20:19.26; Mark 16:14.44 Matth. 26:34.69ff. par.45 Matth. 28:17.46 Luke 24:38; John 20:27; Mark 16:14.

way of referring to these Gospels or their underlying traditions that the author of the epistle may have been aware of these writings, as he may have been of Luke’s Acts, the Letter of James, and potentially some of Paul’s letters, but handles these texts with extreme liberty, guided by his own authority, the revelation of the Risen Christ:

‘And there went three women, Mary, she that was kin to Martha, and Mary Magdalene (Sarrha, Martha, and Mary, Eth.),33 and took ointments to pour upon the body, weeping and mourning over that which was come to pass.34 And when they drew near to the sepulchre, they looked in35 and found not the body36 (Eth. they found the stone rolled away37 and opened the entrance). And as they mourned and wept, the Lord showed himself unto them and said to them: For whom do you weep? weep no more!38 I am he whom you seek.39 But let one of you go to your brethren and say:40 Come, the Master is risen from the dead.41 Martha (Mary, Eth.) came and told us. We said to her: What have we to do with you, woman? He that is dead and buried, is it possible that he should live? And we believed her not42 that the Saviour was risen from the dead. Then she returned unto the Lord and said unto him: None of them has believed me, that you live. He said: Let another of you go to them and tell them again. Mary (Sarrha, Eth.) came and told us again, and we believed her not; and she returned to the Lord and she also told him.’ (EpAp 9f.)

The narrative justifies the scepticism of the apostles with reference to the unre-liability of their female witness as a retort to to retort Marcion’s illustration of the worthlessness of the so-called apostles. EpAp continues:

‘Then said the Lord to Mary and her sisters: Let us go to them. And he came43 and found us within, and called us out; but we thought that it was a phantom and believed not that it was the Lord. Then he said he to us: Come, be not fearful! I am your teacher, because I am the master whom you, Peter, did deny three times before the rooster crowed,44 and now do you deny again? And we came to him, doubting in our hearts whether it were he.45 Then said he to us: Why do you still doubt, and are unbelieving?46 I am he who spoke to you of my flesh and my death and my Resurrection. But that you may know that I am he, Peter, put your finger into the print of the nails in my hands,

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47 See John 20:20.27.48 Agraphon, also found in Commodian, Carmen apologeticum V 564, ed. B. Dombart

(CSEL 15, 1887, 152: ‘A shadow does not make a print’, see also ActJohn 93.49 Luke 24:39; 1John 1:1; IgnSm. 3:2.50 See 2Clem. 5:5; 6:7.51 John 12:32.52 An even broader story of the multiple appearance forms of Christ which embraces Marcion’s

angelic reading and combines it with a material understanding of the body of the Risen in Act-John 88-93.

and you also, Thomas, put your finger into the wound of the spear in my side;47 but you, Andrew, look on my feet and see whether they leaves a print on the earth; for it is written in the prophet: “A phantom of a demon makes no footprint on the earth”.48 And we touched him,49 that we might learn of a truth whether he were risen in the flesh; and we fell on our faces (and worshipped him) confessing our sin, that we had been unbelieving. Then, our Lord and Saviour said to us: Rise up, and I will reveal to you that which is above the heaven and in the heaven, and your rest which is in the kingdom of heaven.50 For my Father has given me power (sent me, Eth.) to take you and those who also believe in me up to here.’51 (EpAp. 10-2)

These passages prove the author’s extraordinary ability of composing a story line as a response to Marcion’s opposite interpretation of the appearance of the Risen Christ.52 The broadening of the narrative specifically intends to contradict the claim that the apostles did not believe. Interestingly, EpAp accepts that the apos-tles had great difficulty in believing, indeed, doubted and distrusted the message of the women, but then gives assurance assures that the Lord did everything pos-sible to convince them, naming particularly Peter, Thomas, and Andrew. In Andrew’s case, we have a saying of the Lord which is only known outside the canonical Gospels, but must have been known at that time, as it is also found in Commodian’s Apologetic Poem (third century?) and in the Acts of John: ‘A phan-tom of a demon makes no footprint on the earth’. EpAp targets precisely Marcion’s catchword (phantom) that appears in Luke 24. The anti-Marcion reading in EpAp also explains why Peter as the head of the eleven is mentioned first, although he does not play a role in Luke 24:38-42. It is his and the eleven’s authority on which Christians believe, because the Lord allowed him, Thomas and Andrew in all possible realism to touch the nails, put a finger into the wound of the spear in the side and to look for the Lord’s prints on the earth.

Luke 24 is turned from Marcion’s testimony for a pneumatic body of the Risen Christ into a proof text for the fleshly Resurrection appearance, where the Lord is proofing the trust of the apostles without need for a hidden revela-tion and a mysterious message to Paul. The Lord himself overturns the natural scepticism of the apostles vis-à-vis human testimonies and enables them to believe the Gospel of the book.

A central part of the epistle comprises a paragraph on the Lord’s incarnation and his death. According to the epistle the Lord himself became the angel

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53 See Horacio E. Lona, Über die Auferstehung des Fleisches: Studien zur frühchristlichen Eschatologie, Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft und die Kunde der älteren Kirche, 66 (Berlin and New York, 1993), 81.

54 IgnSm. 1.55 There are further elements common with the ActJohn 97-102.

Gabriel, being all things in all, and ‘brought the message to Mary’. This further reference to Luke’s birth-story (Luke 1:26f.), missing in Marcion’s Gospel, makes another Marcionite anti-Marcion combination. EpAp adopts Marcion’s angelological Christology despite its obvious opposition to Marcion’s denial of Jesus’ birth from Mary and the fleshly nature of the Incarnate: 53 ‘On that day when I took the form of the angel Gabriel, I appeared to Mary and spoke with her. Her heart accepted me, and she believed, and I formed myself and entered into her body. I became flesh, for I alone was a minister to myself in that which concerned Mary in the appearance of the shape of an angel. For so must I needs do. Thereafter did I return to my Father’ (EpAp. 14).

The passage sounds like a smoothened version of Marcion with Luke’s account of Jesus’ birth being re-integrated into Marcion’s angelological Christology which missed out the birthstory. As with Jesus’ self-Resurrection in Marcion (shared, for example by Ignatius54), in EpAp Christ becomes his self-creator in Mary.

Contrary to Marcion, in EpAp it is not the Resurrection that is of importance, but the Lord’s ‘return’ to the Father until such time when he will come back ‘like the sun when it is risen’, and his ‘brightness will be seven times the bright-ness of it! The wings of the clouds shall bear me in brightness, and the sign of the cross shall go before me, and I shall come upon earth to judge the quick and the dead’ (EpAp. 16).55

3. The Beloved’s coming and going (AscI XI, Luke, Matthew and John)

From the Marcionite/anti-Marcionite reading, the visions of the Ascension become more transparent. The angelological Christology conforms that of Mar-cion and his pupils. The same subject, the Beloved, precedes the incarnation and becomes present in the likeness of man and suffers persecution, death, but raises. We are not dealing with two subjects (Christ and Jesus) as in Cerinthus. In addition, the Ascension describes the process as a transformation.

We know from Marcion that he accepted the cosmology of heavenly spheres, because he read in 2Cor. 12 that Paul was lifted into the third heaven, and from his pupil Apelles that he specifically elaborated on the sphereal nature of Christ’s angelic body. When Tertullian in the discussion with Marcion points to Paul’s ‘examples’ of the resurrection (1Cor. 15:41; ‘the grain of wheat’, ‘to every seed there is its own particular body, as there is one kind of flesh of men,

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56 Tert., Adv. Marc. V 9.57 See Tert., De carne Christi 8; Katharina Greschat, Apelles und Hermogenes: Zwei theolo-

gische Lehrer des zweiten Jahrhunderts, SVigChr 48 (Leiden a.o., 1999), 103-7.58 E. Norelli, Ascensio Isaiae: Commentarius (1995), 193.59 See the excursus in: E. Norelli, Ascensio Isaiae: Commentarius (1995), 192-5.

and another of beasts and birds, and bodies celestial and terrestrial, and one glory of the sun and another of the moon and another of the stars’56), he infers that Marcion had to some extent elaborated on the descent and that Apelles only thoroughly substantiated his Master’s teaching about the poverty of the created flesh and the poor work of the creator god.57 In addition, Marcion also seems to have not solely suggested an angelic, but also a glorious sun-like, lunar, astral and sideric nature of the Lord’s body, a teaching that resonates in the Ascension. Apelles seems to have added to Marcion’s concept of Christ’s angelic body the Stoic notion of fleshliness, of course, angelic and astral, the gradual assumption of flesh during the descent, albeit in a very specific way. Both, therefore, seem to have understood – similar to the Ascension – the process of the descent as transformation.

The Ascension displays criticism of Israel (the Israelites are the torturers of the Beloved), although it does not draw Marcion’s conclusion in rejecting the Jewish past. Rather like Justin, it adopts both Jewish traditions and scriptures and creates a theological basis for their integration, at the core of which is the teaching of the Twelve. And, again, it is this combination that reflects both an influence of and a distancing from Marcion. With Marcion Christians have started discussing which of the writings should carry authority and should be read in the community, either Scriptures, or Paul’s letters, or other texts? Marcion insisted on Paul alone, and a gospel text, a different version from what we know as Luke, that enlightened Paul’s letters. The Ascension includes Moses and the prophets, and makes Isaiah even the protagonist of the cosmic drama. The author-ities, however, on whom the Beloved entrusts the teaching of the Resurrection of the Beloved to all the nations and every tongue, are the Twelve apostles or the Twelve disciples – an expression found in Petrine texts58 – who are qualified as in Acts 1:21f. as those ‘who were with Him’ (III 14.18; IV 3).59 This qualifica-tion, of course, excludes Paul, Marcion’s sole authority.

In the second part of the first vision, the Ascension speaks about the dispute over the Teachings of the Twelve Apostles, their faith, love and purity – pre-cisely the kind of accusations uttered by Marcion. There is no need to see Marcion as the only target of the Ascension, as Isaiah writes about ‘many’ who ‘love office, though devoid of wisdom’ (III 23), ‘many lawless elders, and shep-herds dealing wrongly by their own sheep’ (III 24), ‘many’ who ‘will change the honour of the garments of the saints for the garments of the covetous’. In contrast, the text advocates prophetism and complaints that ‘there will not be in those days many prophets, nor those who speak trustworthy words, save

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60 The tradition that Christ stayed on earth for about 18 months can also be found in other texts which show relations to Marcion, see the Valentinians and Ophites in Iren., Adv. haer. I 3,2; I 30,14, see also and the Apocryphon of James (I 1). The Ophites use the same Lukan resurrection appearance passage as Marcion (Luke 24:36ff.), see A. K. Helmbold, Gnostic Elements in the ‘Ascension of Isaiah’ (1971/2), 223.

61 I am thankful to Samuel Sanders, a student of mine, who has provided me with his reading of this passage.

one here and there in divers places’ (III 27). Moreover, the text sees ‘great hatred in the shepherds and elders towards each other’ because of ‘great jeal-ousy’ (III 29f.). The main argument, however, is the false rejection of Jewish propheticism, the prophets before Isaiah and that of Isaiah, the authority of the Ascension ‘in order to speak after the impulse of their own hearts’ (III 31). There is no other than Marcion who matches this hostile profile better.

In the seventh heaven, having seen Abel and Henoch without crowns and thrones of glory, Isaiah continues that they will gain these only after the descent and ascent of the Beloved, Christ, ‘in the last days’, ‘545 days after the resurrection’ (AscI IX 14-8).60 He then recounts Christ’s descent through the heavens, the final stage being his arrival ‘in his lot’ (AscI XI 3).

And I indeed saw a woman of the family of David the prophet, named Mary, and Virgin, and she was espoused to a man named Joseph, a carpenter, and he also was of the seed and family of the righteous David of Bethlehem Judah (AscI XI 2).

In the Ascension Mary, the Virgin, is specified as a descendent of David, whereas in the two genealogies of Jesus in the Luke and Matthew, Luke specifies only Joseph as Jesus’ connection to David, while Matthew does make a refer-ence to Mary, but only with regard to her position as Joseph’s wife. While Mary’s mention as a descendent of David is surprising of itself, her position is more so, as Mary is first listed as a descendent of David, and a ‘Virgin’, while Joseph is more of an afterthought, left in the background.61

To see parallels and differences to the canonical gospels, the text will be dis-played in a synoptical version together with that of Matthew 1:18-25, Luke 2:1-7 and John 1:1-14.

Luke

2:1 Now in those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus to register all the empire for taxes. 2:2 This was the first registration, taken when Quirinius was governor of Syria. 2:3 Everyone went to

Matthew

1:18 Now the birth of Jesus Christ happened this way.

John

1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was fully God. 1:2 The Word was with God in the begin-ning. 1:3 All things were created by him, and apart from him not

Ascension of Isaiah (XI)

3. And he came into his lot.

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his own town to be reg-istered. 2:4 So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family line of David. 2:5 He went to be regis-tered with Mary, who was promised in mar-riage to him, and who was expecting a child.

2:6 While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child.

2:7 And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in strips of cloth and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

While his mother Mary was engaged to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit. 1:19 Because Joseph, her husband to be, was a righteous man, and because he did not want to disgrace her, he intended to divorce her privately. 1:20 When he had contemplated this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, because the child con-ceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 1:21 She will give birth to a son and you will name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” 1:22 This all happened so that what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet would be fulfilled: 1:23 “Look! The virgin will con-ceive and bear a son, and they will call him Emmanuel,” which means “God with us.” 1:24 When Joseph awoke from sleep he did what the angel of the Lord told him. He took his wife, 1:25 but did not have marital relations with her until she gave birth to a son, whom he named Jesus.

one thing was created that has been created. 1:4 In him was life, and the life was the light of mankind. 1:5 And the light shines on in the darkness, but the darkness has not mas-tered it. 1:6 A man came, sent from God, whose name was John. 1:7 He came as a wit-ness to testify about the light, so that eve-ryone might believe through him…. 1:9 The true light, who gives light to every-one, was coming into the world. 1:10 He was in the world, and the world was created by him, but the world did not recognize him. 1:11 He came to what was his own, but his own people did not receive him. 1:12 But to all who have re- ceived him – those who believe in his name – he has given the right to become God’s children 1:13 – children not born by human parents or by human desire or a hus-band’s decision, but by God.

1:14 Now the Word became flesh and took up residence among us. We saw his glory – the glory of the one and only, full of grace and truth, who came from the Father.

And when she was espoused, she was found with child, and Joseph the carpenter

was desirous to put her away. 4. But the angel of the Spirit appeared in this world,

and after that Joseph did not put her away, but kept Mary and did not reveal this matter to any one.

5. And he did not approach Mary, but kept her as a holy virgin, though with child. 6. And he did not live with her for two months. 7. And after two months of days while Joseph was in his house, and Mary his wife, but both alone. 8. It came to pass that when they were alone

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62 Latest research in the reception of the canonical gospels in early Christianity and into the date of their creation indicates that these may have been written, or at least edited in the time of and after Marcion, see David Trobisch, Die Endredaktion des Neuen Testaments, NTOA 31 (Freiburg, 1996); M. Klinghardt, ‘Gesetz’ bei Markion und Lukas (2006); id., Markion vs. Lukas: Plädoyer für die Wiederaufnahme eines alten Falles (2006); id., The Marcionite Gospel

The passages in AscI, but also those of the canonical texts, shine in a differ-ent light, once they are read against a Marcionite background.62 As mentioned,

that Mary straight-way looked with her eyes and saw a small babe, and she was astonished. 9. And after she had been aston-ished, her womb was found as formerly before she had conceived. 10. And when her husband Joseph said unto her: “What has astonished thee?” his eyes were opened and he saw the infant and praised God, because into his por-tion God had come. 11. And a voice came to them: “Tell this vision to no one.”12. And the story regarding the infant was noised broad in Bethle-hem. 13. Some said: “The Virgin Mary hath borne a child, before she was married two months.” 14. And many said: “She has not borne a child, nor has a mid-wife gone up (to her), nor have we heard the cries of (labour) pains.” And they were all blin- ded respecting Him and they all knew regarding Him, though they knew not whence He was. 15. And they took Him, and went to Nazareth in Galilee.

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and the Synoptic Problem: A New Suggestion: NovT 50 (2008) 1-27; Andrew Gregory, Distur-bing Trajectories: 1 Clement, the Shepherd of Hermas and the Development of Early Roman Christianity, in: P. Oakes (ed.), Rome in the Bible and the Early Church (2002), 142-66; id., The Reception of Luke and Acts in the Period before Irenaeus: Looking for Luke in the Second Century, WUNT 2/169 (Tübingen, 2003); id. and Christopher M. Tuckett, Trajectories through the New Testament and the Apostolic Fathers (Oxford, 2005); id. and id., The Reception of the New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers (Oxford, 2005); Arthur J. Bellinzoni, The Gospel of Matthew in the Second Century: The Second Century 9 (1992) 197-258; id., The Gospel of Luke in the Second Century CE, in: R. P. Thompson and T. E. Phillips (eds.), Literary Studies in Luke-Acts: Essays in Honor of Joseph B. Tyson (Macon, Ga., 1998) 59-76; id., The Gospel of Luke in the Apostolic Fathers: An Overview, in: A. F. Gregory and C. M. Tuckett, Trajectories (2005), 45-68; C. Clifton Black, Mark: Images of an Apostolic Interpreter (Columbia, 1994); Kyle Keefer, The Branches of the Gospel of John: The Reception of the Fourth Gospel in the Early Church, Library of New Testament Studies, 332 (London and New York, 2006); Tuomas Rasimus (ed.), The Legacy of John: Second-Century Reception of the Fourth Gospel, SNT 132 (Leiden, 2009); Charles E. Hill, The Johannine Corpus in the Early Church (Oxford, 2004).

63 See Tert., Adv. Marc. III 2,2f.; I 19,2; A. Harnack, Marcion (1923. 21924 = 1960), 185*; M. Klinghardt, ‘Gesetz’ bei Markion und Lukas (2006), 105.

64 This is not the place, nor is there the space to prove such an assumption, it just serves as a working hypothesis.

65 So M. Klinghardt, ‘Gesetz’ bei Markion und Lukas (2006); id., Markion vs. Lukas: Plädoyer für die Wiederaufnahme eines alten Falles (2006); id., The Marcionite Gospel and the Synoptic Problem: A New Suggestion (2008).

Marcion’s Luke version did not provide the birth-story of Jesus, but began with the ‘unexpected appearance of the Son, who was unexpectedly sent as the unexpected Christ, in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar’ (Luke 3:1a).63 The missing birth story is explained by Marcion’s view on salva-tion of man, or rather man’s soul alone, as he disregarded human flesh. Flesh and body were seen as products of a mediocre demiurge, part of his creation of a cosmos full of deficiencies. This demiurge had created a world where suf-fering and death prevailed from inception.

If we read the four passages Matth. 1:18-25, Luke 2:1-7 and John 1:1-14 and the Ascension against Marion’s background, simply on the assumption that they were written post-Marcion,64 they all appear as counter-stories to his position with the Ascension reacting, but also referring to them. Or to be more precise, AscI is similar to Matth., also hints at John, but positions itself against Luke.

Luke seems to have been a first redaction against Marcion,65 picking up from Marcion the historical emphasis, but starting off with the Caesar Augustus, not with the Caesar Tiberius, as Marcion did. Tax registration was a painful matter certainly known to a rich ship-owner like Marcion. The emphasis on Jesus’ family line of David went against Marcion’s dissociation of Christ from Judaism. So did the explicit reference to Mary ‘giving birth’ – obviously a normal one, there is no mention of anything extraordinary, no spiritual conception, nor is Mary called a virgin, on the contrary Luke introduces a certain ambiguity with Mary’s extramarital pregnancy without developing it further – and the ‘wrapping him in strips of cloth’ literally contradicts Marcion.

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66 Thanks to my colleague and co-editor Professor Allen Brent (King’s College London) who has not only contributed to this paper by reading and critically engaging with it, but also made me aware of this link.

67 Iren. Adv. haer. III 111,2, trans. ANF.

Matth. confronts Marcion differently. This gospel first sides with Marcion in acknowledging a special, spiritual nature of Jesus from his conception and also introduces a Marcionite encratism (Joseph had no marital relations with Mary until she gave birth). Matth. accepts Luke’s version of the extramarital relation with Joseph, but introduces the Holy Spirit that made Mary pregnant (Mary now is called a pregnant virgin), talks of Joseph’s intention to divorce her privately, the appearance of an angel in his dream. Of course, for Matth. the Virgin Pregnancy is simply the fulfilment of Isaiah’s prophecy – playing precisely on the same authority as the Ascension of Isaiah.66 However, even Matth. confronts Marcion by not only endorsing Luke’s story of the birth of Jesus, but also by referring it to the prophecy, ‘so that what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet would be fulfilled’, a prophetic knowledge that Marcion had explicitly rejected.

John takes up Marcion differently. His message is centered against Marcion’s dissociation of this cosmos from the God of Love and Light and the Christ that came into this world, which was not his own, but also sides with him in the differentiation between what was brought by Moses, namely the law, while ‘grace and truth came through Jesus Christ’ (John 1:18), the one who ‘came to what was his own’. Irenaeus knows that John contradicted Marcion’s claim, not the other way around that Marcion opposed John (!): ‘John, however, does him-self put this matter beyond all controversy on our part, when he says: “He was in this world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He came to what was his own, and his own people received him not.” Accord-ing to Marcion, and those like him, neither was the world made by him; nor did he come to his own, but to those of another.’67 Against Marcion, therefore, John insists, that this world was made by the very same Word who was in the beginning with God, was fully God, was life and light. He accepts from Mar-cion the dark character of this world, and also that the world did not recognise, nor receive the messanger (a parallel to Luke), and understands salvation as a spiritual birth by God. However, different from Marcion, John sees salvation being brought precisely through the creator Word becoming what he has cre-ated, flesh. The glorious Christ of whom Marcion spoke, John identifies with this Word that has become flesh.

These texts provide the basis for AscI or vice versa. The Ascension first picks up the idea found in John that the saviour comes into his own, ‘his lot’ or ‘por-tion’, not into an alien world. It also refers to Luke’s Bethlehem and makes the historical link. However, the text sides rather with Marcion and Matth. on the special nature of the saviour, the encratitic element taking the proximity to

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Marcion even further than Matth. by missing out the birth of Jesus. As in Mar-cion, the coming into the world happens unexpectedly (Mary is astonished), as in the blink of an eye, without birth pains and with a womb ‘found as formerly’, although AscI admits that Mary had conceived, yet insists on her virginity. Interestingly, AscI even reflects the conflict about the nature of the saviour’s appearance to this world and the discussion about the birth story. Some claim that Mary as a Virgin gave birth, while many support the AscI’s view, that she has not borne a child, had no labour pains. Like Marcion, AscI endorses the unexpectedness of the arrival and the blindness of the people, although restricting the not-knowing to the time ‘whence He was’ coming.

Joseph’s reaction through the given parallels is harshest in AscI, he ‘was desirous to put her away’, although it is unclear whether this means he wanted to divorce or simply hide her. The former is more likely in the light of what follows and certainly Matth. read the reaction as Joseph’s wish to divorce her, but Matth. exculpates the move, giving as reason that Joseph ‘did not want to disgrace’ Mary. Luke entirely silences any negative reaction, hence also does not introduce the virgin conception or birth, and John turns the arrival of Jesus into an event where the ‘light… was coming into the world’. In John there is no trace of shadow left. The situation is very different in AscI. Not John, the baptist, appears and announces the light ‘so that everyone might believe through him’, but ‘the angel of the Spirit appeared in this world’ who prevented Joseph from putting her away, but Joseph ‘did not reveal this matter to anyone’. The angel also re-appears in Matth. and talks at some length to Joseph, not to divorce her, and refers to Is. 7:14 to underline the foretelling of the conception by the virgin. In John it is a ‘becoming flesh and taking up residence among us’, not a spe-cific birth into a family: ‘We say his glory’ – a cosmic event. Again, the con-trary is found in AscI. The advent is an intimate affair, but not a birth – it just happens that the small babe is there ‘while Joseph was in his house, and Mary his wife, but both alone’. Luke is more realistic and admits the extramarital ‘birth to her firstborn son’ – and adds the wrapping of the son ‘in strips of cloth’ and the ‘manger’, ‘because there was no place for them in the inn’. Matth. repeats the birthing, but adds that Joseph and Mary did not even have extra-marital relations. And, again, for John it is simply an event ‘full of grace and truth’ that the one ‘came from the Father’ who now is not Joseph, but God himself. However, as John had stated before, the one who came to his own was ‘not received’ by ‘his own people’, broadening Luke’s more narrative element of the rejection of a place in an inn. The AscI has its own take: like Matth. the text underlines that Joseph had no sexual contact with Mary, ‘kept her as a holy virgin’, did not even ‘live with her for two month’, and on special plead by the angel (‘tell this vision to no one’), ‘did not reveal this matter to any one’. Despite this emphasis on the hiding of the news, AscI adds that ‘the story regarding the infant was noised broad in Bethlehem’, and the gossip that is added only sup-ports the miraculous nature of the advent – claims that, indeed, she has given

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birth, but then as a virgin (the Matth. version), other voices – more in line with AscI’s own line of narrative before – that Mary has not given birth, but the child simply appeared (‘vision’): ‘She has not borne a child, nor has a midwife gone up (to her), nor have we heard the cries of (labour) pains’. The text resumes: ‘They were all blinded respecting Him and they all knew regarding Him, though they knew not whence He was’.

In what follows in AscI a further double strategy seems to be at work. First, the text reflects Marcion’s belief that the advent of the Saviour was hidden to everybody. Only Isaiah knew about it, to all other prophets ‘(this) has escaped all the heavens and all the princes and all the gods of this world’ (AscI XI 16). However, AscI then underlines, what Marcion had explicitly rejected – that baby Jesus was brought up, sucking ‘the breast as a babe’ (AscI XI 17). The author gives a reason which conforms, however, with the principle intent of Marcion, ‘in order that He might not be recognized’ (AscI XI 17). Despite the miraculous advent – which accomodates Marcion’s reluctancy towards the natural birthing process of the Saviour, AscI integrates, too, the opinion of those who advocated, like Luke, a natural upbringing of Jesus but explains it on Marcionite grounds – that the Saviour had not been recognized. Only when ‘he had grown up he worked great signs and wonders in the land of Israel and of Jerusalem’ (AscI XI 18). This sentence is the entire summary of Jesus’ life, his preaching and his message. In the next sentence, AscI moves already to the cosmic drama of ‘the adversary’ who ‘envied Him and ‘roused the children of Israel against Him, not knowing who He was, and they delivered Him to the king, and crucified Him, and He descended to the angel (of Sheol)’ (AscI XI 19). As with Manasseh, so also Israel is criticised, but exculpated by blaming the devil.

AscI then insists on the identity of the one who descended to the angel, and the one who was crucified and ‘after the third day rose again’ (AscI XI 20f.). Isaiah does not refer back to the previous vision. More important than the Resurrection, the sending out of the ‘Twelve Apostles’ is his ascension (AsJ XI 22), the beginning of a long visionary narrative which details the ascent through the seven heavens (AscI XI 23-32), until he sat ‘down on the right hand of that Great Glory whose glory I told you that I could not behold’ (AscI XI 32). The vision ends with another hint that Isaiah was given a vision that nobody else has ever seen, and he makes the king ‘swear that he would not tell (it) to the people of Israel, nor give these words to any man to transcribe’ (AscI XI 39).

4. Mutual influences and reactions

Contrary to the pictures painted by authors of the outgoing 2nd (and even more of those of subsequent centuries), it emerges from the comparison of the Ascen-sion of Isaiah, the Epistles of the Apostles, Matthew, Luke and John, that these texts fit well the second century circumstances of intense debate and dispute

112 M. Vinzent

68 See Iren., Adv. haer. I 27,1; III 4,3; Hippol., Ref. VII 10. 37; X 19; Tert., Adv. Marc. I 2; Pseudo-Tert., Adv. omnes haer. 6; Epiph., Pan. 41,1; Cyprian, Ep. 74,2.

69 Further evidence for public meetings, exchange and controversies can be read, for example, in Hippol., Ref. IX-X although the author, of course, in his post-Irenaean perspective disapproved of this inter-relationship of teachers; Pseudo-Clem., Rec. III 63.

70 See Justin, Dial. c. Tryph. 120.71 Even the otherwise very careful assessment of K. Greschat, Apelles und Hermogenes (1999),

17-20 suffers from Eusebius’ negative frame.72 See Rhodon in: Euseb. Caes., Hist. eccl. V 13,8.

between their authors, prophets, teachers and apostles who were closely related and relied heavily on mutual borrowings. Marcion was no exception, poten-tially the initiator of some of these discussions and a key to unlock our under-standing of their relations. Marcion based his teaching on Paul. Irenaeus and some others – although not Justin, Clement or Origen – claimed that Marcion’s ‘school’ was dependent on the Syrian Cerdo.68 As one can see – and other examples could be added (Ignatius, Noetus and Marcion all teach that Christ raised himself, for example) – teachers inside and outside Rome were in direct contact with each other.69 According to Tertullian, the earliest open contestant of fellow teachers who denigrated their opponents as ‘opinion holders’ (‘here-tics’) was Justin, by his own admission a Samaritan by birth.70 Like Marcion, he, too, taught in the same city of Rome, and had an important pupil, Tatian, an Assyrian. Tatian, in turn, generated Rhodon (from Asia) as his pupil. Just looking at the home countries of these teachers and pupils, we get a feeling for the breadth of intake, the far reaching attraction of teachers and the range of backgrounds present at these schools. In addition, Tatian and Rhodon are good examples that even the second generation of pupils continued the discussion that existed amongst their masters. While Rhodon mentions his teacher’s book Problemata, where Tatian tried ‘to explain the obscure and hidden parts of the divine scripture’, presumably the Jewish Scripture and Tatian’s answer to Marcion’s Antitheses, Rhodon himself wrote a book Solutions to his master’s Problems, and a com-mentary about the creation story of Genesis. In addition he published a book where he gave some information about the diversity of the pupils in Marcion’s school, the variety of their views to which he obviously responded in more detail. According to Rhodon, the discussions between school masters were not solely carried out in pamphlets, but were face to face disputes and challenges, and, as Rhodon himself reports about Apelles, were far from being derogative in prin-ciple (as later authors like Eusebius of Cesarea wanted to have it when he painted the picture of this assumedly first ‘dark age’ of Christian history71):

‘Apelles said that it was not at all necessary to examine one’s doctrine, but that each one should continue to hold what he believed. For he asserted that those who trusted in the Crucified would be saved, if only they were found doing good works. But as we have said before, his opinion concerning God was the most obscure of all. For he spoke of one principle, as also our doctrine does.’72

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73 Tert., Adv. Val. 5.74 Tert., Adv. Val. 1 (trans. Roberts).

From this one glimpse, we can infer that despite all the differences, teachers were looking for common ground, be it the crucified Saviour or the belief in God, and that at least some were seeking the one principle which they shared.

Not astonishing for the reader, therefore, is the fact that in the same context where Tertullian refutes Valentinus (and Valentinians), he gives an almost charm-ing and certainly colourful picture of these clever, sophisticated philosophers, while he presents himself in an intentional understatement as a simple-minded author. Then, however, he still sees the need, too, to refer to Christianity as philosophy and introduces the ‘philosopher and martyr’ Justin as his prime counter-example of a learned Christian with whom he associates himself, and to Irenaeus ‘that very exact inquirer into all doctrines’.73 Tertullian, thus, prooves that Christianity is not solely a matter for the foolish or empty handed rhetorician, but that doctrines have to be understood in systematic terms, a subject of which he himself was certainly a master of, too. Tertullian’s descrip-tion of the Valentinians shows, that, even after at least half a century of bitter debate between various Christian schools, especially in the big cities of the empire, its capital Rome, but also Alexandria, Antioch and elsewhere, the demarcation between the various ‘heresies’ in the old sense of rival schools and the proponents of their respective often contradictory or complementary doctrines was still extremely difficult to establish, one of the reasons for so many attempts to establish what ‘heresy’ is and who ‘heretics’ supposedly were. Despite his open criticism of Valentinus and the Valentinians, Tertullian admits that the Valentinians are without ‘doubt a very large body’ of people, that ‘they guard their doctrine’, pursue and maintain ‘their religious system in very earnestness’, have set ‘harsh conditions’ before they enrol and admit new members to their community’, have a long-term ‘instruction during five years for their perfect disciples’ in order to gain ‘full knowledge’, and try to ‘raise the dignity of their mysteries’, followed by Tertullian’s report that despite their own opinions, these ‘heretics’ have no intention to break the community with their fellow Christians, but ‘affirm the community of faith’:

‘If you propose to them inquiries sincere and honest, they answer you with stern look and contracted brow, and say: “The subject is profound.” If you try them with subtle questions, with the ambiguities of their double tongue, they affirm the community of faith. If you intimate to them that you understand their opinions, they insist on know-ing nothing themselves. If you come to a close engagement with them they destroy your own fond hope of a victory over them by a self-immolation. Not even to their own disciples do they commit a secret before they have made sure of them. They have the knack of persuading men before instructing them; although truth persuades by teaching, but does not teach by first persuading.’74

114 M. Vinzent

75 Justin, 1Apol. 26.76 C. Markschies, The Gnosis: An Introduction (London and New York, 2003; trans. of id.,

Die Gnosis, Munich, 2001), 10; see Justin, 1Apol. 7. 26. 35.77 See Christopher B. Kaiser, Creation and the History of Science (London, 1991), 4.

Tertullian paints a picture, of course stylised and with ironical and cynical contours of a later period, which still conveyes this taking notice and even challenging the other’s opinion in debates and questionings. In addition, Tertul-lian clearly differentiates between first, second and third generations of these schools and still, through his polemics, it becomes clear that if there were not little difficulties for him as a heresy chaser to figure out the wolves in sheep skins of the third generation, as it was hard for Irenaeus who dealt with the second pupil generation of these schools, then how thorny and tricky must have been the first attempts like those of Justin to establish his own view on ‘heresy’ and ‘heretics’ and gain recognition for it. In his first Apology addressed to the Emperor Antoninus Pius (138-61), Justin admits that even the political author-ities are not in a position to differentiate between the various school adherents, and hints at his own effort and previous work, the treatise Against all the heresies that he had ‘already composed’, and which he was prepared to send to the Emperor, too.75 Christoph Markschies points out that (like Tertullian after him) Justin wrote ‘in Rome in the middle of the second century with admirable opennes’ that his opponents ‘call themselves Christians’.76 Justin’s complicated anti-heretical task becomes apparent if we place him in this time which was also far from having ans established means for ascertaining orthodox identity which we know from later times, not solely within the emerging Christian movement, but also in the non-Christian world. We see examples of the policing of a complex network of individual communities, in families with generations of bishops, elders and leaders, in charismatic or organisational newcomers, sponsors, politicians, civil servants, in the exploding literary fixation of oral traditions, revelations or interpretations of those put down in anonymous, pseu-donymous, apologetic or paraenetic tracts, gospels, harmonies of these, acts, homilies, prose and soon poetry. Justin like his contemporaries operated in a Late Antique environment which had not yet created forms, nor structures and strictures to allow for dispute resolutions between teachers and schools, for exclusion or banning of opposite-minded professors, except counter-arguings, verbal and written criticisms, encounters and discussions, revisions, re-editions of existing works and the production of new ones. However, there was a grow-ing sense of need for both structures and strictures, even in non-Christian leading thinkers like Diodorus (c. 90 – 21 B.C.), or in the contemporaries of Jus-tin, Galen or Claudius Ptolemy who looked out for some sort of clearing station between truth and myth,77 or the 3rd c. Diogenes Laertius who endeavoured to define the successors of the true, Greek philosophers culturally uncontaminated from non Greek sources. And, of course, we know of the political tendency

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amongst the Jewish Rabbis who after the destruction of the temple and the Synod of Javne were campaigning for a more coherent and constraint form of Jewish identity, which, together with the parallel Christian endeavours led to cementing their mutual differences and created two new religions with Judaism soon loosing sight of and interest in its Greco-Roman traditions (so that even eminent Jewish philosophers like Philo of Alexandrien were solely handed down and read by Christians), while Christians kept their Jewishness only par-tially, or to be more precise where the question of the Jewish traditions within Christianity became one of the rocks against which the spiritual and institu-tional unity of the Church was torpedoed and burst into pieces. Marcion’s own thoughts, his endeavour to combine Paul’s writings with a gospel text into a ‘New Testament’ as opposed to the superseded ‘Old’ one, and the battle against this program are central to this broader process of identity-search and building of demarcation lines between not only ‘closer to’ and ‘further away’ from truth, but between an interpretation of truth that opposes truth and error and separates out authenticity from forgery, miracle from magic, recognition from fabrication, delineation from tolerance, honesty from guilty and sinful falsehood, faith from superstition and soon orthodoxy from heresy. With Justin, however, as with Irenaeus and even with Tertullian or Clement of Alexandria, we are not fully there, only with Origen in the third century will these gaps be no longer bridged. Examples of still intrinsic and mutual discussions between authors and teachers where all sides give and take, leave aside and add, accept and alter are those given above between the Ascension of Isaiah, the Epistle of the Apostles, Mar-cion, but also Gospels which later became canonical.