SOURCE: An introduction to St. Irenaeus: Proof of the Apostolic Teaching, translated by Joseph P. Smith, The Newman Press, 1952, pp. 3–44.

[In the essay below, Smith examines the history, form, style, and structure of Irenaeus's Proof of the Apostolic Preaching. Smith states that Irenaeus's motivation for writing the treatise was to prove that what the apostles preached was true, and that his intention was not to provide an exposition on apostolic preaching.]

A. AUTHOR AND WORKS. PUBLICATIONS OF THE PROOF.

1. THE AUTHOR.

St. Irenaeus (end of second century) comes in the history of patrology after the “Apostolic Fathers,” and the “Apologists,” and in some ways constitutes a link between the latter and the Alexandrians. He may be said to belong to the third generation of Christian teachers, for in his youth in Asia Minor he had known the celebrated Polycarp, and the latter had himself known our Lord's own disciples, in particular the apostle St. John, who made him bishop of Smyrna.¹ In the reign of Marcus Aurelius, when persecution was raging at Lyons, Irenaeus was a presbyter in that city, and about the years 177-8 succeeded the martyr St. Pothinus as its bishop.² The year of Irenaeus's death is unknown; it is commonly put at about 202, at the time of the renewed persecution under Septimius Severus, and he is venerated as a martyr; but the evidence for his martyrdom is unsatisfactory.³

2. HIS WORKS.

Eusebius of Caesarea, to whom we are ultimately indebted for all we know about Irenaeus (apart of course from what may be gathered of him from his own writings), mentions as his works a treatise against Marcion, various letters, of which the most celebrated is the one written to Victor of Rome on the Paschal controversy, sundry other treatises, including one “for the proof of the apostolic preaching” (the one here translated: hereafter referred to as “the Proof”), and—his principal work—the five books of his treatise against the Gnostics, commonly known under the title Adversus haereses, “Against the heresies.”⁴ This work, as we shall see later, is of especial importance for the understanding of several passages of the Proof. Irenaeus wrote in Greek, but his works have not come down to us, as such, in the original.⁵ We have, however, in addition to numerous fragments in various languages, much of the original Greek as quoted by later writers, and the complete text, in an early Latin version, of Adversus haereses, and also an Armenian version of the last two of the five books of that work, and of the Proof. This last-named version is the one here translated into English; with the exception of a few fragments textually of little help and also in Armenian, it is our only source for the text of the Proof.

3. ARMENIAN TEXT.

The Proof was for long supposed to have been irretrievably lost, but in 1904 an Armenian version of it was found, in a manuscript belonging to the church of Our Lady at Erevan (now the capital of Soviet Armenia) by the Most Rev. Archimandrite (of Etschmiadzin) Karapet Ter Mekerttschian, who was at the time acting as Vicar to the Catholicos, and later became bishop of Azerbaidjan.⁶ In addition to the Proof, the same manuscript contained several other items, including the Armenian version, referred to in the previous paragraph, of books 4 and 5 of Adversus haereses, which is in the same peculiarly distinctive Armenian style as that of the Proof. The Armenian text of the Proof was first published, by the finder of the manuscript, in 1907, along with a German translation, and with annotations by Adolf von Harnack, who also divided the text into a hundred “chapters.”⁷ It was republished in 1919 in Graffin and Nau's Patrologia Orientalis.⁸

4. TRANSLATIONS.

The German translation of the editio princeps appeared in a revised edition in 1908; meanwhile a Russian version had been published by Professor Sagarda.⁹ In 1912 Professor Simon Weber published a new German translation, and in 1917, after a controversy as to the accuracy of the rival German versions, the same scholar published a Latin one whose aim was to reproduce the Armenian text, so far as possible, word for word.¹⁰ In the meantime a French version, made by the Rev. J. Barthoulot, S. J., had been published by Professor Tixeront.¹¹ This was reprinted as an appendix to the Patrologia Orientalis republication of the text (1919), which was itself accompanied with an English version made by the finder and others. In 1920 another English version was published by J. Armitage Robinson, and a Dutch one by H. U. Meyboom; and in 1923 an Italian one, by Ubaldo Faldati.¹² The present translation was made from the text of the editio princeps (attention being paid to various emendations since suggested) and collated with the text as republished in the Patrologia Orientalis. All the other translations mentioned above, except the Dutch one and the second edition of the first German one, were glanced through, and are occasionally mentioned in the notes to this version, but no attempt was made to collate them exhaustively. The chapter-division of the editio princeps, though open to certain criticisms, has of course been retained.

B. TEXTUAL HISTORY.

5. AUTHENTICITY.

That the work here presented to us is really, as the manuscript describes it, the “Proof of the Apostolic Preaching” of Irenaeus, is certain on internal grounds. The title and the name (chapter 1) of the addressee agree with the information given us by Eusebius;¹³ the work reflects the conditions of the end of the second century,¹⁴ and its matter and manner and many of its turns of expression agree with Irenaeus's known writings, and with his views and preoccupations; the parallels with Adversus haereses are many and striking; in chapter 74, to mention a particular example, we have the erroneous statement that Pontius Pilate was procurator under Claudius, a peculiar error which agrees with what we know to have been Irenaeus's opinion;¹⁵ and in chapter 99 the author refers to his work against heretics, using the longer title which is given by Eusebius as that of Adversus haereses.¹⁶

6. DATE AND PLACE OF COMPOSITION.

This reference in the Proof of the author's Adversus haereses enables us to date the former work approximately, since it must be posterior to at least the earlier part of Adversus haereses. In book three of this work there is a list of the bishops of Rome, which concludes with the mention of Eleutherus as then reigning.¹⁷ Since Eleutherus became bishop of Rome about the year 174, and Irenaeus became bishop of Lyons about 177-8 and died early in the following century, we may say that he composed the Proof at Lyons, when bishop of that city, in the last two decades of the second century, or possibly in the early years of the third. Certain indications have been taken to favour a later rather than an earlier date within that period, and it has even been suggested that the work belongs to the last years of its author's life; but this is all pure conjecture.¹⁸

7. DATE OF THE MANUSCRIPT. TEXTUAL TRADITION.

Our manuscript bears, at the end of the Proof, a scribal postscript naming as its owner the “Lord Archbishop John … brother of the holy king.” This can be none other than the well-known “John Arkhayeghbayrn (= ‘king's-brother’),” for his learning also called “Rabbun,” younger brother of King Hethum I of Cilicia (1226-1270). John, who died in 1289, was consecrated bishop in 1259 and only some years later is given the title “archbishop.” Hence one may date the manuscript around the middle of the second half of the thirteenth century, say between the years 1265 and 1289. The translation itself was certainly made long before that date, and is in a style which lends itself to certain corruptions; exactly to what extent corruption has taken place we have no external means of judging; as has already been said, our only sources for the text of the Proof are this manuscript and a few Armenian fragments. The latter exhibit certain differences from the text of the manuscript, and these differences are most likely to be accounted for by “editing” of a text more faithfully copied in our manuscript.¹⁹ Two questions, however, we are now able to answer with a certain degree of confidence: at what date was the Armenian translation made, and was it made directly from the Greek. As will be seen from the following paragraphs, it was almost certainly made in the sixth century, and most probably between the years 570 and 590, and was made directly from the Greek.

8. DATE OF TRANSLATION: EXTERNAL EVIDENCE.

In previous editions of the Proof, or of the Armenian version of Adversus haereses 4-5, the dating has been based on quotations from those works found in earlier manuscripts than ours. Both versions are in the same peculiar style, and were assumed to be the work of the same translator and so of the same approximate date. When the two versions were first published, earlier quotations were known from “Stephen the Philosopher,” who was identified with the eighth-century Stephen of Siunikh, and from the “Catholicos Sahak,” who was identified as Sahak (Isaac) III, who died about the end of the seventh century.²⁰ Hence the translations were said to be not later than the seventh century.²¹ Later, however, quotations were found which were datable to the beginning of that century.²² The quotations are but slight, and show certain differences from our text, so that one might suspect them to be the result of independent translation, and so far from proving that our translation already existed, rather to suggest the contrary. There is, however, sufficient evidence of the peculiar style of our version to allow us to account for the differences by supposing editorial revision and the corruption to which the style lends itself, and conclude, with Jordan, that our version must have been made before the year 600.²³

9. DATE OF TRANSLATION: INTERNAL EVIDENCE.

As soon as the Armenian text of the two works in our manuscript was published, Conybeare pointed out its stylistic resemblance to the Armenian version of Philo, and maintained that it must be from the same pen, and hence of the early fifth century, since the version of Philo was then assigned to that period.²⁴ Subsequent research has established beyond a doubt that our text does in fact belong, if not necessarily to the same pen, at least to the same school and to the same short period as the Armenian Philo and certain other translations from the Greek; but the dating of this school has been matter of dispute.²⁵ The Armenian Philo was known to Moses of Khoren, who used to be assigned to the mid-fifth century. Considerable doubt has been thrown on this dating, most scholars now maintaining that Moses of Khoren must be assigned to the eighth or ninth century. Conybeare controverted this view, and so do other scholars.²⁶ Failing Moses of Khoren, the earliest witness to the Armenian Philo is the historian Elisaeus; he also used to be assigned—and by many still is assigned—to the mid-fifth century; but it has been maintained that he wrote subsequently to 570.²⁷ What may be regarded as certain is that the translation of the Proof, along with that of Philo and others, belongs to the earliest phase of the so-called “Hellenising” school of Armenian. It has been maintained that this school cannot be earlier than the sixth century: it has seemed necessary to allow for a considerable lapse of time between the “golden age” of Armenian (first half of fifth century) and this strange style; and the school seems to have been unknown to the philhellene historian Lazar of Pharp, who wrote at the beginning of the sixth century. If we accept the beginning of the sixth century as the earliest date, and the end of the same century as the latest, both because of the evidence mentioned in the previous paragraph and because of Elisaeus, we are left with the sixth century as the period within which our translation was made. The extraordinary style, however, of the versions in question can scarcely be accounted for except by supposing them to have been intended as “keys” to the Greek text, and the most probable dating of the rise of the Hellenising school is that of Akinean, who places it among the Armenian exiles at Byzantium after 570.²⁸ That was the period at which Armenian students had need of such keys. The early phase in question cannot have lasted long, and in any case many of the exiles returned after 590, so that one may say that our version was most probably made at Byzantium between the years 570 and 590. In deference, however, to the views of a number of scholars, it should be pointed out that this is the latest dating, that the reasons for denying that the Hellenising school can have existed before the sixth century are by no means cogent, and that if those scholars are right in maintaining the traditional date for Moses of Khoren or Elisaeus, our translation may be put into the first half of the fifth century. This, however, seems to the present writer unlikely.

10. TRANSLATION DIRECTLY FROM GREEK.

In the case of an Armenian translation of an early Greek work, one has to take into account the possibility that the translation was made not directly from the Greek, but from a Syriac version. In the editio princeps of the Proof attention was drawn to certain peculiarities in the text of the Proof and of Adversus haereses which seemed to indicate such a Syriac intermediary, but in view of the counter-indications the question was left open, and in republishing the text in Patrologia Orientalis Bishop Karapet mentions the general agreement that the version had been made directly from the Greek (though indeed in the meantime it had even been suggested that the translation had been made from a Latin version).²⁹ In fact, the indications of Syriac transmission were with one exception utterly negligible, and even that exception is inconclusive, while the indications of translation directly from the Greek were very strong.³⁰ One may now assert with confidence that our version, like the other products of the Hellenising school, is based immediately on the Greek text; one may even go further and say that it seems to have been made with a view to providing those insufficiently acquainted with Greek with a key to a text they were studying in the original.

11. STATE OF TEXT.

From what has just been said, the reader will be able to form an idea of the style of Armenian in which the version is cast.³¹ At its worst it approaches the type “The hand-shoes, which on the table were, have I in the pocket put.” A particular feature of this early period of the Hellenising school is the use of doublets or expanded expressions to render Greek compound words or “bracket” the exact meaning of single Greek words.³² This does not as a rule occasion any difficulty, as the resulting expressions, though often awkward, are fairly intelligible. The attempt, however, to reproduce the syntactical features of the original in a language which has its own different syntax results inevitably in passages whose meaning is most obscure, even when one known the language whose syntax is so reproduced, and which are not infrequently quite unintelligible to the average scribe and so give rise to corruptions in the text which increase the difficulty of reconstructing the original.³³ The text presented to us by our manuscript is no doubt fairly faithful, and is on the whole not unsatisfactory, but it is too often obscure, and in several places is manifestly corrupt.³⁴ It may however be said that there is no doubt in any matter of importance as to the general sense, and one can confidently accept the version as being on the whole a faithful rendering of Irenaeus's work.

12. PRINCIPLES OF THIS TRANSLATION.

In making the present version, the translator has aimed at producing a readable English text which should represent not the peculiarities of the text of our manuscript, but Irenaeus's work, while still remaining a translation of our manuscript, not a paraphrase. Accordingly, where the Armenian text seemed certainly at fault, the necessary emendation has been rendered in the text of this version, the meaning of the manuscript's text being relegated to the notes. Other emendations, while not so accepted into the text, have been mentioned in the notes. Where the exact sense of the Armenian was uncertain, the present version has sometimes aimed at reproducing in English the same ambiguity; at other times a likely version has been given in the text, and alternatives in the notes; in one or two places, where the general sense was clear enough, but the expression obscure or corrupt, a paraphrase has been given, representing what seemed most likely to have been the original expression. In all such cases the reading of the manuscript is given and briefly discussed in the notes, as also in cases in which it might be useful to readers to know the origin—and the degree of probability or possibility—of variant renderings in other versions. Such textual notes, however, have been kept as brief as might be, this series not being the place for philological discussions. The punctuation of the Armenian text is not invariably felicitous, and has been departed from without acknowledgement of such departure in the notes, except once or twice where the change of punctuation has induced a notable change of sense. In the Scriptural quotations the wording of the Douay version has been used as a rule wherever the Armenian seemed to rest on the same reading of the Scriptural original. In dealing with the peculiarities of the Armenian style (use of doublets and expansions) there is perhaps a certain inconsistency. Such doublets are not seldom desirable in English, and they have occasionally been retained for that reason; in general, however, expanded expressions have been reduced where English usage normally requires such a reduction (for example, the constantly recurring “it is right and necessary” is regularly rendered by use of the verb “must”); moreover, in several places a wordy expression of the text has been kept even though in all probability it represents an expansion of the original.

C. TITLE, ADDRESSEE, FORM AND STYLE.

13. TITLE.

Eusebius refers to the work as … “(a treatise) for the demonstration of the apostolic preaching.”³⁵ The word here rendered “demonstration” is in Greek epídeixis, and the treatise is therefore sometimes referred to as “the Epideixis.” This word means, more or less, “demonstration,” since it connotes not only “proof” but also “display, exposition,” and J. Armitage Robinson used for his English version the title “Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching.”³⁶ The present version retains the title “Proof …,” both because it has some claim to be regarded as the traditional English title, and because it goes better in English, and because it represents in fact the scope of the treatise. The academic question has been raised, whether Irenaeus's title was … “(A treatise) for the proof …,” as we read in Eusebius, or simply … “Proof …,” the rest being merely the turn of phrase used by Eusebius in order to work the title into his sentence. In any case, the Armenian manuscript bears the shorter form: “Proof of the Apostolic Preaching.”

14. ADDRESSEE.

The treatise is addressed, in chapter 1, to “my dear Marcianus,” and Eusebius tells us that Irenaeus wrote it … “to brother Marcianus.”³⁷ The use of this expression does not necessarily mean that Marcianus was the writer's brother according to the flesh, though this is a natural interpretation of it, and there seems to be no reason why that should not be the meaning. If Marcianus was Irenaeus's brother, he was presumably some years his junior. A “brother Marcianus” is also named as author of the Martyrium Polycarpi, and some have sought to identify him with the addressee of the Proof; but the reading “Marcion” is regarded as more likely than “Marcianus” in the Martyrium.³⁸ Others have thought our Marcianus must have been a recent convert from Judaism, in view of Irenaeus's repeated insistence, in the Proof, that the Old Law has been abrogated.³⁹ This insistence is indeed remarkable, and calls for an explanation, but as we shall see, it is not necessary to seek such an explanation in any judaising tendency of the addressee. He must have been a former companion of Irenaeus, for in chapter 1 we read: “Would that it were possible for us to be always together … As it is, as we are at the present time distant in body from each other …”; and he may perhaps have been a bishop, or at least a priest, for in the same chapter he is told that the treatise will help him to confound heretics and preach the truth, and it seems to be suggested—though the rendering here is uncertain—that he has the “care of souls.”⁴⁰ It seems clear at least that he was not a mere catechumen.

15. LITERARY FORM.

The Proof, then, is written in the form of a letter, as indeed all of Irenaeus's writings seem to have been, not only the “letters” more properly so called, but his other treatises also being cast in letter form; even Adversus haereses is addressed, in the prefaces to the individual books, to an unnamed “dearly beloved” (in the singular). It is, however, evident that the Proof, like Adversus haereses, is a planned composition, and destined for the general public, so that though it was doubtless addressed to a real Marcianus, we may regard the letter-form as being in effect a literary artifice; it was at that time a common one. The construction is on the whole clear and logical enough in the arrangement of the matter, though in this, as we shall see later, Irenaeus was probably simply following his source; and precisely in the earlier chapters, where he is himself responsible for the arrangement of the matter, there is a little of the confusion and repetitiveness which seems to have been characteristic of Irenaeus.⁴¹ If one has at times the impression of a string of quotations introduced by nearly identical formulas, this is only to be expected in view of the nature of the work; and in other places the quotations are led up to or followed in a more artistic manner.

16. STYLE.

In the preface to the first book of Adversus haereses Irenaeus says that niceness of language is not to be expected of him, since he was living “among Celts” and speaking for most of his time a foreign tongue; nor artistic elegance, since he had never learnt it; but he adds that he writes with affection and expects to be read with affection. The style of the Proof, like that of Adversus haereses, is frequently confused—in fairness to the men who translated Irenaeus into often enigmatic Latin and Armenian, it should be remarked that not all of the obscurity is due to the fault of the translators—and at times repetitive and diffuse; and here, in fairness to Irenaeus, it may be said that the failure of his translators to see their author's point has led to not a little false phrasing and lost emphasis which have made the style seem even more repetitive. The very sentence, in the first chapter, in which the author promises to be brief, is itself a model of rhetorical prolixity. So indeed is the whole chapter, and the following section, and it seems clear that, as is normally the case, the introductory portion of the work was aiming deliberately at literary effect.

D. DIVISION AND CONTENTS.

17. DIVISION.

Harnack, as has already been said, divided the text into a hundred numbered “chapters,” and this division is retained in the present translation. In addition, for convenience of reference, headings have been added, which do not always coincide with the chapter-division, and the treatise has been divided into four main sections. There is a fairly clear distinction of topic in the course of the treatise, which serves as a basis for this division, but it is not so easy to choose the exact spot at which to divide, and the division here adopted makes no claim to being better than others. The treatise may be first divided into two parts, corresponding to the “moments” before and after Christ, and each of these parts may be further divided into two sections. After a short introduction on the need of orthodox faith and good works, there follows a section on the Trinity, creation, and the fall of man. This constitutes the first section of the “pre-Christian” part; the second section recounts the development of God's plan for the undoing of the evil wrought by the fall, in the course of Old Testament history, culminating in the Incarnation. The first section of the “Christian” part deals with Christ as seen in the Old Testament; and the second section with the New Law. There is a short conclusion, warning once more against heretics. The thesis of each of the four sections may be summarised as follows.

18. GOD AND THE CREATURES; THE FALL.

(Chapters 1-16): the way of life is that of the orthodox faith and good works. Faith tells us we are baptised for the remission of sins in the name of one God almighty, Father, Son (who became man and died and was raised), and Holy Spirit (who spoke through the prophets and is poured out upon the faithful). God is supreme ruler over all things, for they are His own creation; with His Word (the Son) and Wisdom (the Holy Spirit) He made all things. The Father is invisible and incomprehensible, the Son appears as a link with man, the Holy Spirit is given by the Son to man, and leads him to the Son, who brings him to the Father, who gives incorruptibility; God has made us His sons. There are seven heavens in which dwell angels. God is glorified by His Word and Spirit and by their angels. He made man as His own image, from earth and His own Spirit, free and lord of the world, including its angels, and set him in Paradise, giving him a help like himself. Adam and Eve were children, innocent and guileless, and were deceived by the jealous angel into disobeying God's prohibition of the tree of knowledge, imposed on them as a sign of subjection and a condition of immortality; so man was cast out of Paradise and became subject to death, the angel and the serpent being cursed for their part in his fall.

19. HISTORY OF REDEMPTION.

(Chapters 17-mid. 42): The devil brought about the first death through Cain, and man went from bad to worse, especially through marriage with angels, who corrupted him with wicked knowledge, until man was destroyed by the Flood. God saved Noe and his sons; of the latter, Cham was cursed and the curse worked itself out in his descendants, while first Sem and then Japheth were blessed, the blessings being inherited in the same order by their descendants. That of Sem came to Abraham, who found God and was justified by faith, and to his seed, whom God rescued from Egypt through Moses, and to whom He gave the Old Law. Through Jesus son of Nun (to whom He had given that holy name) He brought them into the promised land, which they took from the descendants of Cham, and where they had a kingdom and were taught by the prophets, until God's promises were fulfilled in the virgin birth of Christ of the seed of Abraham and of David; so man was brought into contact with God, by a repetition of creation and by obedience which restored man to the likeness of God and undid the primal disobedience. Christ's birth, death, and resurrection are real, so we are really saved. His apostles founded the Church and gave the Holy Spirit to the faithful, and in the calling of the Gentiles through the Church the blessing of Japheth is inherited by his descendants.

20. CHRIST IN THE OLD LAW.

(Chapters mid. 42-85): All this is foretold in the Old Testament. Christ is there as the “Son in the beginning” in creation; He appeared to Abraham and to Jacob, and spoke with Moses, and spoke through the prophets. The prophets foretold His eternal kingdom, His incarnation, the virgin birth, and told where and of what stock He would be born, and foretold His kingdom of peace in the Church. They prophesied His entry into Jerusalem, His miracles, His sufferings and crucifixion, His descent into hell, His resurrection and His ascension into glory, where He now reigns at the right hand of the Father, till He judge in triumph. (This section, though it may so be resumed in brief space, is the largest of the four.)

21. CHRIST IN THE NEW LAW.

(Chapters 86-100): The fulfilment of the prophecies confirms our faith, showing the truth of the mission of the apostles. The abrogation of the Old Law was foretold; it is superseded by the Law of Charity. Christ's exaltation was foretold, and the establishment of the New Covenant, as the inheritance of the Gentiles, who were to become a holy people. So is brought about a change of heart in man, and the Church is more fruitful than the Synagogue; the old chosen people has given place to the new, and we have no need of the Law. Man is restored to his lost innocence and is virtuous without the Law. He is saved by the invocation of the name of Christ; God accomplishes what is impossible to man. This is the preaching of the truth, which is that of the Church and must be sincerely accepted. Heretics sin against Father or Son or Holy Spirit; we must avoid their ways if we hope to be saved.

22. PROBLEMS PRESENTED.

Certain problems cannot fail to present themselves to the reader of the Proof. In the first place, the title suggests that the work is an exposition of the preaching of Christianity; but though the theology is of course Christian, the argument is drawn practically entirely from the Old Testament, and there is no mention for instance of the Eucharist, or of several other points essential to Christianity. On the other hand, there are certain curious emphases, and in particular the repeated insistence on the abolition of the Old Law. These and similar problems find an answer in the following sections in this Introduction.⁴²

E. SCOPE AND IMPORTANCE.

23. APPARENT AIM: CATECHETIC.

The aim of the treatise is stated in its first chapter: to give Marcianus “in brief the proof (or exposition) of the things of God,” or, as we would put it nowadays, “a compendium of theology,” which should serve both to guide him to salvation and to enable him to refute heretics and expound the faith with confidence “in its integrity and purity.” This description suffices to show the importance, as a Christian document, of the Proof; it seems to correspond to the title understood in the sense “exposition of the apostolic preaching,” and to promise to be the earliest summary of Christian doctrine we have, and at that, from the pen of a bishop separated by only one intervening generation of teachers from the apostles themselves. It has in fact been called a catechetical work, representing Christianity as then expounded by the bishops to the faithful.⁴³ Nevertheless, this estimate must be accepted with reserve. Beyond a doubt, we have here in fact an exposition of much of what was preached by the apostles; but a persual of the Proof suffices to show that it cannot be regarded as a complete exposition of their preaching, or of what Irenaeus regarded as “Christianity.”

24. REAL AIM: APOLOGETIC.

Though Marcianus is told that by means of the treatise he may “comprehend all the members of the body of truth,” this is to be “in a few details”; the treatise is “in the form of notes on the main points,” and its aim is to confirm the faith of Marcianus and enable him to confound heretics.⁴⁴ The real thesis of the work is seen from the passage in chapter 42 in which we are told that God caused our redemption to be prophesied in order that when it came we might believe, and from the passage in chapter 86 in which we are told that the realisation in Christ of the prophecies is the proof that the witness of the apostles is the truth, and from the author's preoccupation especially at the beginning and end of the work to insist on the need for orthodoxy and the avoidance of heresy.⁴⁵ The author wishes to prove that what the apostles preached was true rather than to give an exposition of their preaching, and is concerned for the “integrity” of the faith not so much in the sense of its “exhaustiveness” as in the sense of its “soundness.”⁴⁶ The points on which he repeatedly insists are those which were denied by the heretics. Hence the work has been said to be apologetic rather than catechetical;⁴⁷ and while its catechetical aspect cannot be denied, it is certainly apologetic in aim, though not in quite the same sense as the works of the earlier “apologists.” It is rather “apologetics” in the modern sense, aiming not so much at the defence of Christianity against paganism or Judaism, as at the positive establishment of the credentials of the orthodox Church. It is, in fact, a “proof of the apostolic preaching,” that is, a proof of the divine mission of the Church founded by the apostles. It may indeed be called a “compendium of theology,” but, as Weber puts it, it is “fundamental theology.”⁴⁸ It has the practical aim of establishing the truths whose acceptance means acceptance of the orthodox Church—the rest will follow from that.

25. METHOD. EXEGESIS.

This proof is drawn mainly from the Old Testament, and the treatise is important for its use of Scripture; indeed it has been called a Biblical manual.⁴⁹ It passes in review practically the whole of the Old Testament, showing how it prepares the way for the New. Irenaeus's exegesis is characterised by that development of “typical” senses which was so much in accord with the spirit of the times, the method employed by the apologists, developed still further by Irenaeus and Clement of Alexandria, and carried to its greatest heights by the latter's successors. The exegesis of the Proof, as befits a work written not for edification alone, but to bring conviction, is comparatively sober. Inevitably it is at times arbitrary or based on mere associations, but it is free from the wilder flights of fancy found elsewhere, and there is no cabbalistic juggling with letters or numbers.⁵⁰

26. IMPORTANCE.

The importance of the Proof as a “manual of theology,” although not in the same sense as might have been hoped, is clear enough from what has been said in the preceding paragraphs; it should be pointed out, however, that the finding of this lost work has in fact added little to what was already known. The Proof contains little that was not already to be found in even earlier documents; in particular, little that is not in Adversus haereses. There are, it is true, one or two points which may be regarded as an advance on that work, but the real importance of the Proof, as compared with Adversus haereses, is due to its manner of presentation, its brevity and coherence. One may say that it is important not so much for its theology, as for being precisely a manual of theology.

F. THEOLOGY OF THE PROOF.

27. IRENAEUS'S PREOCCUPATIONS.

For an account of Irenaeus's theology in general, or of that of the Proof in particular, or of the systems of his Gnostic adversaries, the reader must be referred to the existing treatises on those subjects. There are certain points, however, which should be touched on here, because some acquaintance with them is necessary to the proper understanding of the author's expressions in the Proof. Irenaeus has certain definite ideas to which he constantly returns, and his allusions are not seldom difficult to interpret without knowledge of the idea underlying them. Moreover there are in the Proof several statements of which one risks missing the point unless one knows what prompted the author to make them, namely his preoccupation with the errors—now long forgotten—of his opponents, the Gnostics in general, and Marcion in particular. It will not be out of place, therefore, to give here a brief account of such points of Irenaeus's theology, and of Gnosticism, as are relevant to the understanding of the Proof.

28. GNOSTICISM; MARCION.

The proper title of Irenaeus's principal work, commonly known as Adversus haereses, was “Exposure and Overthrowal of Knowledge falsely so called”; and the “knowledge falsely so called” was Gnosticism, which may be roughly described as belief in various systems of esoteric doctrine, whose knowledge was supposed to bring salvation to the initiate.⁵¹ In the board sense Gnosticism is fairly universal both in time and in space, but in the strict sense the world is applied to certain forms current in the Greco-Roman world from some time before the birth of Christ until several centuries later. In Irenaeus's time such “fancy religions” were rife, and constituted an especial danger to Christian orthodoxy. Gnosticism is not, of course, a specifically Christian heresy, but then, as ever since, Gnostic sects drew largely from Biblical and Christian sources; several of their leaders, and many of their adherents, were ex-Christians, or regarded themselves as being Christians, as having the true interpretation of Christian revelation. Marcion, against whom Irenaeus wrote a special treatise, was the son of a bishop, and seems to have been a bishop himself, and was one of the most prominent of the pseudo-Christian leaders, numbered by Irenaeus and others along with the Gnostics, though his system differed considerably from the general run of Gnosticism.⁵² Though all Gnosticism was distinguished by certain fundamental peculiarities, the various sects differed considerably in their views; not all sects held all the views attributed in the following paragraphs to “the Gnostics,” as is clear enough from the fact that several of them are mutually exclusive.

29. GOD AND THE WORLD.

The perpetual problem of theology is to reconcile the transcendence and goodness of God with this world's dependence on Him and with the existence of evil. For the Gnostics, the supreme God was unknowable, entirely aloof from matter, and matter was the root of evil. The void between God and the world was filled by a number of spiritual beings produced by “emanation” from God and by multiplication among themselves, and called Aeons.⁵³ Matter was eternal, or the abortive product of a fallen Aeon; material things and the spiritual principle in the world were not of like nature, matter being foreign to God and the root of corruption and beyond salvation, but spirit being (ultimately) from God, and immortal. This world was created, or formed from chaotic matter, by a being, who himself owed his origin to God or to the Aeons, known as the demiurge;⁵⁴ for some sects, the angels were creators. Though, as has been said, the origin of evil was seen in matter, an evil principle was commonly posited as a third member of a triad: God—demiurge—“devil.” From this account there arise several particular points which have their repercussions on the Proof, and which will be considered in greater detail in the following paragraphs. Irenaeus's own outlook naturally resembles that of the Gnostics in certain respects; both were the product of the same intellectual milieu, and both were ultimately based on the same sound philosophy. For Irenaeus too, as we shall see, the gulf between God and the world had to be filled in; but it was filled in not by intermediate “emanated” beings, but by God's own Word and Spirit; matter was of itself incapable of salvation or incorruption, but was nevertheless good, created by God, and part of man, and so, by the redemption, brought into touch with incorruptibility; evil is due not to any essentially evil principle but to the misuse of godlike free will.

30. GOD THE FATHER.

The “God the Father” of the New Testament is the supreme God. In that, Irenaeus and the “Christian” Gnostics are in agreement. For Irenaeus, as for the Gnostics, He is invisible, incomprehensible, not to be circumscribed in space; yet it is He who “contains” all things; He is unknowable and unapprochable—save through His Son and the Holy Spirit.⁵⁵ The “God” of the Old Testament is, as He Himself says, the creator. Hence, for the Gnostics, He was not the supreme God, the Father-God of the New Testament, but the demiurge; some of them even represented Him as the enemy of God, and the source of evil. Marcion in particular elaborated the distinction between the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New; the former was the demiurge, the “God” of the Law, just but severe, jealous and violent, having for his favourite people the Jews, and intent on bringing about a Messianic Jewish empire, and the source of strife and evil; whereas the God of the New Testament is kind and merciful, a God of peace, and wishes to save men from evil, by making use of the demiurge's Messianic plans and turning them to His own ends. In all these views, God's intervention to save mankind could be described as the interference, by an “other God” with the creatures of the demiurge. Hence the importance for Irenaeus of the line of argument adopted in the Proof, showing the continuity between the Old Law and the New; and hence the special emphasis on the identity of God the Father with the creator, on the fact that He—the creator—is Lord of all men, Jews and Gentiles alike, both just judge and loving Father.⁵⁶

31. GOD THE SON.

As “God the Father” is the supreme God, so Christ is His Son. Here too Irenaeus is at least in verbal agreement with the Gnostics. For Irenaeus, He is the Word of God; God created through Him, it is He who gives matter its solidity, and He is immanent in the universe as the Platonic world-soul.⁵⁷ He was ever with man, and is the link whereby we have access to the transcendent Father.⁵⁸ He is “the Son” because He is the “reproduction” of the Father, His image, expressed on the plane of possible contact with creation; He was always with the Father; the manner of His “generation” is inscrutable.⁵⁹ Because He is the visible image of the invisible Father, it was He who manifested Himself materially in the theophanies of the Old Testament (to Adam, to Abraham and Jacob and Moses).⁶⁰ So too man is made in His image;⁶¹ and in His incarnation He reproduced the original creation of man in order to “recapitulate” all things.⁶² It is He who confers the Holy Spirit. For the Gnostics, Christ the Saviour was an Aeon. In consequence of their view of matter as essentially evil, they maintained that he did not really assume a human body. According to Marcion and others he took only a “seeming” body, and that not through the Virgin, but by a special act; Marcion represented him as appearing for the first time in the synagogue at Capharnaum; according to others, he came “through” the Virgin, but “took nothing from her.”⁶³ According to others, the child born of Mary was not Christ but only Jesus, the son of Joseph, or of the demiurge, or a man prepared to act as the “vehicle” of Christ; Christ descended upon him in the form of a dove at his baptism, and left him before his passion. In all these views “Christ” was not really born, nor did he really die or rise again. These errors also find their reactions in the Proof.⁶⁴

32. THE HOLY SPIRIT.

The Holy Spirit, for Irenaeus, is the Wisdom of God; in creation, He is associated with the Word; it is He who speaks through the prophets, and in Scripture, but it is the Word who communicates Him to men.⁶⁵ At man's creation, God breathed into him His own Spirit, which is free from evil and so kept man innocent until man rejected Him by the fall.⁶⁶ Man's likeness to God was given by the Spirit, and restored by the pouring out of the Spirit on the faithful, which gives man back his lost innocence, rendering him virtuous without the law; it is the Spirit who leads man to Christ.⁶⁷ Irenaeus does not state explicitly the divinity or personality of the Holy Spirit, but that is no reason for speaking of his “binitarianism.” He enumerates Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as the three “articles” of the faith; he says the Spirit is the Wisdom of God, and he constantly associates Him with the Word, whose divinity and personality he does expressly declare; so that his view is clearly perfectly orthodox: the Holy Spirit is a divine Person, proceeding from the Father (though Irenaeus does not of course use that expression), and conferred on creatures through the Son.⁶⁸ Marcion and others rejected the sending of the Holy Spirit, and His gifts, especially that of prophecy; for which they are taken to task, without being named, in the Proof.⁶⁹

33. MAN.

God made man with His own hands, that is, with the Word and the Spirit; He made him from earth, giving him an outward form to His own “image” (that is, to that of the Son), and gave him “likeness” to God by breathing into him His own Spirit.⁷⁰ Man was created free like God, and lord of the world, including its angels, and immortal; he was intended to develop a more and more perfect likeness to God, but the very freedom of will which likened him to God proved his undoing, since he misused it and so lost his high estate and his “likeness” to God (though the “image” was in his outward form and not lost) and his immortality.⁷¹ Man is composed of body, soul, and spirit; in Adversus haereses Irenaeus gives an account of this composition, with the soul drawn between the attractions of spirit and body, resembling the description of the charioteer in the Phaedrus.⁷² All three elements are necessary to man as God made him and meant him to be, but whereas body and soul are the constituents of man as an animal forming part of creation as a whole, the spirit is a special “godlikeness.”⁷³ For the Gnostics, matter was evil and incapable of salvation; only the soul and spirit could be saved. Irenaeus insists that the body too is part of man, and that everything is equally the creation of the one God, not only angels and the (spiritual) heavens, but also this world and man, body as well as soul and spirit.⁷⁴

34. “SPIRITUAL MAN” AND GOOD WORKS.

For the Gnostics, all men were not alike; fundamental to Gnosticism was a special interpretation of the trinity body—soul—spirit. As has already been said, the body was for them beyond salvation. The soul might be saved, the spirit could not but be saved. A current characterisation of men (not peculiarly Gnostic; it is found for example in the New Testament) divided mankind into three classes; according to his “spiritual level” a man might be described as “material” (or “earthly” or “carnal”); or as “sensual” (to use the translation adopted in the Douay version); or as “spiritual.”⁷⁵ For the Gnostics this represented a division of the human race into three classes with respect to salvation. The “material” man—the unbeliever—would not be saved in any case; the “sensual” man—the ordinary run of believers; for the “Christian” Gnostics, orthodox Christians—could attain a measure of salvation, by reason of his faith, but must supplement it by good works; the “spiritual” man—the Gnostic initiate—was saved as such, by virtue of his superior knowledge, quite apart from “good works.”⁷⁶ Irenaeus interprets quite differently from the Gnostics the statement that flesh and blood cannot possess the kingdom of God;⁷⁷ and if he agrees with them not only that the “sensual man” needs good works as well as faith, but also that he who has the spirit is thereby saved and is superior to the law, which is not made for the just man;⁷⁸ this is because the spirit knows no evil, and he who has it is virtuous by reason of the “change of heart” which it produces, and abounds in good works without needing to be admonished by the formulated word of the law.⁷⁹ The Spirit is offered to all men and necessary to all men; the man who does evil loses the spirit and ceases to be a “spiritual man.” Instead of being distributed between three classes, belonging as it were to the devil, to the demiurge, and to God, all men alike—believers, Jews, or Gentiles—are the creatures of the one God, though He does not stand in the same relation to all of them.⁸⁰

35. THE TRINITY AND MAN.

Particularly clear and striking in Irenaeus is the account of the persons of the Trinity in their dealings with man. Reference has already been made to the distinction between the “image” of God (the Son) and the “likeness” (in the Spirit), and to the representation of the Son and the Spirit as the “hands” of God.⁸¹ The rôles of the persons of the Trinity are expressed in the exegesis of Eph. 4. 6: here it is the transcendent Lord, the Father, who is above all, the creative Word, the “world-soul,” who is with all, and the vivifying Spirit in man's constitution who is in us all.⁸² The Father reveals Himself in His “reproduction,” the Son, and the Son gives the Spirit to the prophets, who convey the revelation to man. In the process of redemption there are two chains of action, from God to man and from man to God. In the former, God the Father sends the Son, who becomes incarnate, and who confers the Spirit, who enables man to live as he should; in the latter, the Spirit leads man to the Son, who presents him to the Father, and the Father confers “rebirth” and incorruptibility.⁸³ “The Son is knowledge of the Father, and knowledge of the Son is through the Holy Spirit.”⁸⁴

36. RECAPITULATION; COMMUNION; INCORRUPTIBILITY.

Mention should also be made of certain other ideas to which Irenaeus often makes reference: the “recapitulation” of all things in Christ, man's “communion” with God, and his reception of “incorruptibility” as the fruit of the redemption. The idea of “recapitulation” (“summing up,” “restoring”) is a central theme in Irenaeus; the word is of course taken from St. Paul, but the idea has been worked out by Irenaeus in his own way.⁸⁵ For him the “recapitulation” is a “fresh start,” accomplished in the manner of the incarnation; a taking up again and restitution of God's original plan for man by the reproduction in the incarnation of the features of the original creation, and the reversal of the features of the fall. The immediate effect of this “fresh start” is to bring about, or rather, to restore, a “communion” between God and man. The reference is not merely to the two natures in the person of Christ, for the “communion” is between the human race and God the Father. It is more than a mere “reconciliation” in the sense of the putting off of wrath; the expression implies friendly intercourse, a readmission in some degree to the privileged position held by Adam as the companion of God. By it we are enabled to be “adopted” by God, and to approach the Father and so receive the ultimate fruit of the redemption, “incorruptibility.”⁸⁶ For the Gnostics, as has been said, incorruptibility, the immortality of the body, was a contradiction in terms, matter being essentially corruptible; only the soul or spirit could be immortal. For Irenaeus too, incorruptibility was bound up with the transcendence and unattainability of God, not “natural” to matter, but a special favour, granted originally under condition, and after the fall unattainable to man, had it not been for the visible coming of Christ. Soul or spirit, however, is part of man but not man; the whole man is saved, body included; thanks to the coming of Christ, to the “fresh start” or recapitulation accomplished in His incarnation, and the restored communion with the Father, man is enabled to receive from the Father that incorruptibility which will finally restore him to the state to which the first, immortal, man was destined before the fall.⁸⁷

G. LITERARY AFFINITIES OF THE PROOF.

37. IRENAEUS AND HIS SOURCES; CONTRA IUDAEOS.

It has been suggested that Irenaeus is rather a reporter or compiler than either an original thinker or even a systematiser; and it is true that investigation of his works reveals much that parallels or echoes the works of earlier writers, and that if one amplify the echoes, almost the whole of Christian literature up to his time might seem to have been drawn upon by him; he can hardly, however, be called an uncritical compiler, and his system, though often confusedly expressed, is—pace Loofs—coherent enough.⁸⁸ Moreover, many parallels between Irenaeus and earlier writers are doubtless to be explained not so much by direct borrowing as by a common source in the catechetical tradition, or by independent exploitation of a common work of reference. In the case of the Proof, it was suggested by J. Rendel Harris, as soon as the text was published, that the source of the main body of the work was probably a collection—since lost—of “Testimonies against the Jews,” that is to say, of Scriptural texts grouped under argument-headings, intended to convince the Jews out of the Old Testament itself that the Old Law was abolished, that its abolition was foreseen in the Old Testament, and that its purpose had been to prepare and prefigure the New Law of Christ.⁸⁹ Such “testimonies” have come down to us from later times, and it seems not improbable that such a collection of Scriptural “ammunition” existed already before the time of the apologists, perhaps even before the New Testament was written. The “apostolic preaching” itself must have relied largely on such arguments (witness the examples in the New Testament), and that not only as addressed to the Jews. Such a hypothesis explains not only the almost exclusive use, in the Proof, of the Old Testament, and that in an ordered series of texts, and the insistence on the abolition of the Old Law, and such arguments as the greater fruitfulness of the Church as compared with the Synagogue, but also several points of detail, which will be mentioned briefly in the following paragraphs.

38. SCRIPTURE.

It would seem, from the Proof, that Irenaeus was not acquainted with the whole of the Old Testament—not that there is anything very remarkable in that. Both Harnack and Tixeront remark that he restricts his Old Testament history within the limits which are traditionally those of such a catechesis.⁹⁰ This is but natural; but in the course of his review of the historical books, Irenaeus has inserted, in the appropriate places, what seems to be intended as a description of the book of Leviticus, and what is expressly put forward as a description of the book of Deuteronomy, though neither of these books is of great use for the end in view; and both the descriptions leave one with the impression that Irenaeus knew little of the books in question, beyond their names, although he has quotations from both of them.⁹¹ He must, of course, have been acquainted with such portions of the Old Testament as were in “liturgical” use, for reading at Christian assemblies; and no doubt for him, as for most other Christian writers and speakers, the liturgical text with which he was acquainted was often the immediate source of his quotations. For the Proof, however, he seems, as has been said, to have used a collection of texts grouped under argument-headings, rather than the original text or even such selections from it as were used liturgically. Certain of the texts cited by him as if they were continuous and taken en bloc from the book of the Old Testament which he names as their source are in fact formed out of the relevant portions of a longer continuous passage, or simply composite, consisting of phrases taken from quite different parts of the same book (though at other times he separates such phrases and says explicitly that they are from different places).⁹² It would seem here that Irenaeus has simply transcribed what was grouped together in his source, rather than sought his matter in the text of the Scripture itself. The occasional false attribution of quotations is easily explained by supposing that Irenaeus has attributed a text to the author named in his source for a preceding text, but harder to explain if he looked up the original text; the same may perhaps apply to one or two apparently apocryphal quotations; Irenaeus may have mistaken a headline or gloss for a quotation.⁹³ Moreover, though he is as a rule careful to name the sources of his quotations, he leaves some of them attributed to an unnamed “prophet” or “the prophets,” or “the book of the twelve prophets.”⁹⁴ Had he taken the quotation directly from the source he could easily have ascertained who was the author; but perhaps his secondary source did not distinguish them; though it is of course possible that he was citing from memory or from his own notes and had simply forgotten or not noted the author. The quotation, in the Proof, of Isa. 5. 9 in two different forms, in close succession and apparently without realisation that the same passage was in question, shows that the passage was not simply taken from a copy of Isaias.⁹⁵ It may also be remarked here that where an Old Testament passage has been quoted in slightly different form in the New Testament, Irenaeus, while attributing the passage to its Old Testament source, and making no mention of the New, quotes nevertheless in the form used in the New Testament.⁹⁶ So too he quotes simply as “Jeremias” the passage attributed to that prophet in Matt. 27, 9-10, although it is not found in our Old Testament text.⁹⁷ Moreover, in one place he attributes to “the Law” not only the expression which is in fact from “the Law,” namely the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob, but also the words the God of the living, which occur in the argument with which the New Testament follows up the quotation from the Law.⁹⁸ Apart from this circumstance, the actual text of the New Testament is little used in the Proof, though both St. Paul and St. John are quoted, and there are of course echoes of the New Testament and statements based on it, and a parallelism of argument—more likely due to Irenaeus's immediate source than to the New Testament itself—especially with the epistle to the Romans, and with the Acts. In Adversus haereses Irenaeus makes it clear that for him the Septuagint version represents the genuine Old Testament in Greek;⁹⁹ but his quotations occasionally depart from the standard “Septuagint,” and that not only when they are in the form given in the New Testament. This may well be another indication of a collection of “Testimonies” as an immediate source; indeed the agreement with the New Testament forms seems to be accounted for in this manner rather than by use of the New Testament as the immediate source.¹⁰⁰

39. APOCRYPHA.

Not only canonical Scripture, but also apocryphal books have evidently served, directly or indirectly, as sources. They are rarely, however, quoted as “Scripture.” In addition to the quotation attributed to Jeremias in the New Testament, of which mention has already been made, there is in the Proof another quotation attributed to Jeremias, which is not to be found in our Old Testament text, and one attributed to David which is likewise not to be found.¹⁰¹ There are several other statements or expressions, some of them apparently quotations, which may perhaps have an apocryphal source.¹⁰² Under this heading it may be remarked here that the quotation from the Shepherd of Hermas which is found (unacknowledged) in the Proof is also found in Adversus haereses, and is there cited as “Scripture.”¹⁰³ Apart however from direct quotation, there are several dependences upon apocryphal literature. The account of the corruption of humanity before the flood is evidently taken from an apocryphal source, almost certainly the book of Enoch.¹⁰⁴ The “seven heavens” are more likely to have been taken from such a source than from the Gnostics, whom Irenaeus would scarcely have copied; he may have taken them from the Testament of Levi, or from the Ascensio Isaiae, of which there seem to be some echoes in other places of the Proof; or he may have been influenced by the apologist Aristo.¹⁰⁵ The account of the behaviour of the star at Bethlehem, and of Abraham's search for God, are also doubtless of apocryphal origin.¹⁰⁶

40. TRADITION; PLATO; THE “ELDERS.”

As has already been remarked, much of what is common to Irenaeus and other writers may well represent not so much influence of one on another as the common stock. So too the influence of philosophical systems, especially Platonism, is to be accounted for not so much by direct influence of the authors of those systems, as by the intellectual common stock of educated men of the time. The influence of Platonism on Irenaeus's theology, as on that of his fellows, is evident; Christian theology was formulated against a background of Platonism, and the Platonic tradition passed into the Christian one. It is natural that Irenaeus, who was so proud of his connection, through Polycarp, with the apostles, should appeal to tradition in the form of the declarations of men of the apostolic age. He refers in several places (twice in the Proof) to the “elders,” by which he means “the disciples of the Apostles,” as evidence for what he says; but it is worthy of notice that one of the references in the Proof merely records as a tradition of the “elders” the chiliastic interpretation of Isa. ii. 1-10 which Irenaeus defended in Adversus haereses against the one which he gives in the Proof.¹⁰⁷ The erroneous view, which reappears in the Proof, that Christ was crucified under Claudius, is said in Adversus haereses to have been the tradition of the “elders.”¹⁰⁸ Irenaeus's source for what he attributes to the “elders” was no doubt, to a certain extent, Polycarp. For chiliasm in particular, however, though it is also found in Justin, and for other matters also, his source was that indefatigable and uncritical collector of “apostolic gossip,” Papias.¹⁰⁹ Whether he had any other written source is doubtful. No doubt much of the Johannine and Pauline character of Irenaeus's thought is to be attributed to the influence of Polycarp, who had known St. John personally, and who repeatedly quotes St. Paul in his own epistle to the Philippians.

41. APOSTOLIC FATHERS.

In addition to Papias, whose chiliasm is represented in the Proof by the brief reference to the tradition of the “elders,” and to Polycarp, who is quoted by name in Adversus haereses, and of whose epistle to the Philippians there may be an echo in the Proof, and to whom Irenaeus doubtless owed much that he had assimilated in youth and no longer consciously referred to any source, Irenaeus is indebted to others of the apostolic age.¹¹⁰ Mention has already been made of the quotation in the Proof of the Shepherd of Hermas, and of the fact that in Adversus haereses the same quotation is attributed to “Scripture.” There are also perhaps other echoes of the Shepherd in the Proof, and there is what may be a reminiscence of the Didache, though it is not likely that the expression “the teaching of the twelve apostles” in chapter 46 is an allusion to the title of that work; and there are echoes of the Epistle of Barnabas, and perhaps of Clement of Rome. All these “echoes” however are but echoes, some of them very faint, and do not prove any real dependence on those works.¹¹¹

42. JUSTIN.

The most considerable of the apologists, and a man who enjoyed a great reputation for his learning, was St. Justin “philosopher and martyr.” It seems not improbable that Irenaeus knew Justin personally at Rome, and it is certain that he knew his works and was influenced by them. The dependence of Irenaeus on Justin has commonly been regarded as evident and extensive. Whole passages of Irenaeus can be parallelled in the works of Justin; Irenaeus's Scriptural repertoire, and his readings of the text, agree to a large extent with Justin's; Irenaeus often repeats not merely the exegesis or argument of Justin, but even some of the actual wording used by Justin.¹¹² On the other hand, there are certain notable differences, and the community of Scriptural repertoire and exegesis may well be due to a common use of a source book rather than to dependence of Irenaeus on Justin.¹¹³ The hypothesis put forward above, of a book of texts against the Jews, would account for the choice of texts and the order and nature of arguments of both writers, and would better account for the differences of treatment, since such a source book would give simply the headings and the texts and glosses, not a detailed working out of the argument; while the occasional echoes of the wording used are, as Harris has pointed out, much better accounted for by supposing that both authors echo a gloss or a headline or an adjacent text of a source book, than by supposing that Irenaeus had gone to the works of Justin for his quotations and echoed some chance phrase in Justin's further argument.¹¹⁴ In Adversus haereses, Irenaeus names Justin as the author of a treatise against Marcion; otherwise he does not refer to him, and Loofs, in his posthumously published article on the sources of Irenaeus, went so far as to say that there is no demonstrable borrowing on the part of Irenaeus from the extant works of Justin.¹¹⁵ This statement, like several others in the same article, will scarcely meet with general approval; but it may well be admitted that direct dependence of Irenaeus on Justin cannot be shown to have been so extensive as it has been thought to be.

43. THEOPHILUS; OTHER APOLOGISTS.

In the work just referred to, Loofs endeavoured to show that one of Irenaeus's principal sources was the lost work of Theophilus of Antioch against Marcion. However that may be, it seems certain enough that Irenaeus owed something to Theophilus. There are not a few echoes in Irenaeus of Theophilus's extant work Ad Autolycum. The most striking of these to be found in the Proof is the representation of Adam and Eve as children, used to explain both their innocence and the ease with which they were misled into sin.¹¹⁶ There are also in the Proof a couple of points of resemblance to Melito of Sardis, and perhaps an echo of the Epistola ad Diognetum; and in one or two points there may be dependence on Aristo: mention has already been made of the fact that belief in “seven heavens” is said to have been found in Aristo. The account given by Origen of Aristo's lost “Discussion between Jason and Papiscus” shows it to have been a sort of “Summa contra Iudaeos,” but though such a work may well have influenced both Justin and Irenaeus, it is not likely that it is to be identified with the lost “Testimonies” supposed as a common source for the latter; more likely it too was an elaboration of that source.¹¹⁷

44. CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA?

That there are parallels between the works of Irenaeus and those of Clement of Alexandria is undeniable. It seems however more likely that such parallels are to be attributed to a common source, or that if there was any borrowing, it was Clement who borrowed from Irenaeus rather than vice versa. The literary activity of Irenaeus falls in the last quarter of the second century, until his death perhaps about 202; that of Clement extends from about the eighties of the second century until his death about 215. Hence the two were contemporaries, and influence in both directions is possible. Clement, however, probably started writing later than Irenaeus, and certainly continued after the latter's death. Moreover, book three of Adversus haereses can be dated by the reference to Eleutherus as the reigning pontiff to between the years 174 and 189.¹¹⁸ Clement was already writing before the death of Eleutherus, but of his extant writings only the Protrepticus can be assigned with any likelihood to that early period; while both Stromata and Paedagogus were produced after the date commonly assigned for the death of Irenaeus.

H. SOME REMARKS ON THE MATTER OF THE PROOF.

45. OMISSIONS AND INCLUSIONS.

What has been said in the preceding sections supplies an answer to some of the problems mentioned in § 21. The almost exclusive use of the Old Testament, the silence (apart from the mention of baptism) on ecclesiastical, liturgical, or sacramental discipline, and the insistence, on the contrary, on the abrogation of the Old Law, may be explained both by the scope of the work—to induce acceptance of the orthodox Church, which will ensure all the rest—and by the hypothesis that the source used was a book of “Testimonies against the Jews,” a source suitable for a work with such a scope. The comparative silence on eschatological questions may be accounted for in the same way; this was not a point of importance for the question of orthodoxy, except in so far as Gnostic views on the possibility of bodily resurrection were concerned, and this point is dealt with. Various other emphases and repetitions are likewise due to the need to set orthodox theology against the views of the Gnostics. Thus in treating of the Trinity Irenaeus naturally does not concern himself with points that only later took on special importance, such as the divinity of the Holy Spirit or the Person and natures of Christ; but he does insist on the divinity of the Creator, and His identity with God the Father, and on the genuineness of Christ's birth, and on the charism of prophecy given by the Holy Spirit, because these points, little as it may now seem necessary to dwell on them, were the ones denied by the “trinitarian heretics” of the time. The curious insertion, as if it were fundamental to Christianity, of the “seven heavens” may perhaps be due to the desire to set this “orthodox Gnosticism” against the more extravagant Gnostic cosmologies.

46. SOME NOTABLE POINTS.

From what has been said of the contents of the Proof and of the theology of Irenaeus, it will be clear that the work contains much that is of interest to theologians: the theology of the Trinity, the Soteriology, and especially the development of the parallelism between creation—fall and incarnation—redemption; and the exposition of Old-Testament history as leading up to the Church. Among minor particular points may be mentioned the attribution of Scripture to the Holy Spirit, and of the fourth gospel to Christ's “disciple John,” and the testimony to the use of the trinitarian formula in baptism.¹¹⁹ The resemblance between the account of Christianity given at the end of the Proof and that given by the “Reformers” has been remarked on by several writers;¹²⁰ lest this resemblance be regarded as having any polemical value it should perhaps be pointed out that it is purely negative and due to the scope of the work, which is clearly not the exposition of Christian institutions; and that Irenaeus does insist on the insufficiency of faith without good works, and that the faith which he demands is clearly “dogmatic faith,” that is, orthodoxy; and that redeemed man undergoes a “change of heart,” and by virtue of the Spirit is not “still a sinner.”¹²¹

47. SOME PECULIARITIES.

Mention may be made of several points in the Proof which are striking not because of their importance, but because of their comparative rarity, at least in an account of the fundamentals of Christianity. Thus the reading of Gen i. 1, whence Irenaeus derives his interpretation “a Son in the beginning …,” is not extant elsewhere than in the Proof, though similar interpretations are found elsewhere.¹²² The other points are none of them uniquely Irenaean, and some of them are not very uncommon, but they may still be remarked upon; some of them are certainly erroneous. Thus he includes, as if it were essential to orthodoxy, the doctrine that there are seven concentric heavens; and he says Pontius Pilate was procurator of Claudius.¹²³ There is also a reference to the Millenarian tradition, so phrased however that it cannot be concluded with certainty that Irenaeus still upheld the truth of that tradition.¹²⁴ Other points more or less “peculiar” are the representation of Adam and Eve as children, and of man as lord of the world, including the angels in it; the attribution to the Word of God's walking with man in Paradise, and of the theophanies of the Old Testament, and of the punishment of Sodom and Gomorrha; and the statement that the decalogue was abolished along with the rest of the Old Law.¹²⁵ Remarkable also is the exegesis of the blessings of Sem and Japheth, the latter being realised in the calling of the Gentiles through the Church; and the detailed parallelism between the creation of Adam, from virgin soil and the Spirit of God, and the incarnation of Christ, from the Virgin and the Holy Spirit; and the identification of the Holy Spirit, instead of the Word, with divine Wisdom; and the distinction between the Persons of the Trinity founded on their activity ad extra.¹²⁶

48. LEADING IDEAS.

It may be said that the main points of the doctrine of the Proof are, as Irenaeus says, the three “articles” of the baptismal “rule of faith”: Father (Creator, transcendent but accessible giver of incorruptibility), Son (the Word with the Father from the beginning, immanent in the universe and always with man, linking him with the Father, and in His incarnation “recapitulating” the creation and reversing the fall), and the Holy Spirit (in man, giving him likeness to God and leading him to the Son, speaking through the prophets, making man sinless and superior to the Law, by abiding Charity). The framework of the various “Creeds” is here already clearly discernible.¹²⁷ The historical section is of course ruled by the Christian outlook on the history of the world as a history of redemption, with the incarnation as its culmination. In the working out of the argument one may perhaps, by a useful but not rigorously accurate generalisation, distinguish what may be called the “Johannine” and the “Pauline” trains of thought: the Johannine insistence on “the Word from the beginning” and His rôle as our link with the Father, and the primacy and sinlessness of Charity in the Spirit; and the Pauline argument from the helplessness of fallen man and the reversal of the fall by Christ, and the abrogation of the Old Law, as the culmination of God's calling first of Israel and then of the Gentiles to be the heirs of Abraham's justification by faith. Regarded precisely as a “proof,” the Proof has for its basis the fact that the old dispensation was but the preparation and prophecy of the new, and that the realisation of that prophecy is the proof of the genuineness of the message brought by the Gospel.

I. CONCLUSION (SUMMARY).

49. IRENAEUS AND THE PROOF.

To resume, by way of conclusion, in the form of an appreciation of the work: it is certain that the thirteenth-century Armenian manuscript here translated is a version, made almost certainly in the sixth century, and from the Greek original, of the “Proof of the Apostolic Preaching” written by St. Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons, in that city towards the end of the second century. Only one intervening generation of tradition separated its author from the apostles themselves, and its value lies in the fact that, invested as it is with the authority of so early a successor to the apostolic ministry, it is the earliest document we have that professes to give an exposition of the basis on which the apostolic preaching rests. It is important as a catechetic-apologetic document, and for its exegesis; though it adds little new matter to what we already knew from Adversus haereses, its value, as compared with that work, lies in its compendiousness.

50. THE MESSAGE OF THE PROOF.

The Proof must not be supposed to contain a full exposition of what its author regarded as essential to Christian theology and behaviour; its scope is to prove the Church's credentials. It is addressed to a fellow-Christian, Marcianus, who may have been the author's brother, and who may have been a bishop. It expounds the “rule of faith” in the formula of baptism (the mysteries of the Trinity and of the Incarnation), and the history in the Old Testament of the creation and fall of man and the unfolding of God's design for his restoration, showing also how the details of the Incarnation, Ministry, Passion, Resurrection, Ascension and universal Kingdom of Christ were foretold, and thereby proves the truth of the mission of the apostles, and so of the Church which they founded. In the calling of all nations through the Church God's plan reaches its term; as was also foreseen and foretold, the Old Law is superseded by the Law of Charity; we are saved through the name of Christ, by good works and the faith of the orthodox Church.

Notes

1. For Irenaeus's friendship with Polycarp, and the latter's with the first disciples, cf. Irenaeus's letter to Florinus, in Eusebius, Hist. eccles. 5. 20. 6-8. Regarding Polycarp's appointment as bishop of Smyrna, cf. Irenaeus, A.H. 3. 3. 4 (“ab apostolis … constitutus episcopus”), and Tertullian, De praescr. haer. 32 (made bishop by St. John).

   “He may be said” to have belonged to the third generation of Christian teachers; but as he himself says (letter to Florinus as above), he was only a boy when he knew the aged Polycarp; there is about half a century between their deaths (156?-202?).

2. Presbyter in Lyons (sent thence on embassy to Rome, to urge leniency towards Montanists), Eusebius, Hist. eccles. 5. 3. 4-4. 2. Succession to Pothinus, ibid. 5. 5. 8.

3. Irenaeus is venerated as a martyr by both Greeks (feast August 23) and Latins (feast June 28); but Eusebius does not say he was martyred. The first extant reference to him as a martyr seems to be in the fifth century (no. 115 of the Responsa ad quaestiones ad orthodoxos attributed to Justin; there is also a passing reference in our text of Jerome's Commentary on Isaias 64. 4, but the word “martyr” is here probably an interpolation; Jerome makes no mention of martyrdom in his life of Irenaeus, De vir. ill. 35). The statement—second half of sixth century—of Gregory of Tours (Hist. Franc. 1. 27; In glor. mart. [= Mir. 1] 50) that Irenaeus was martyred is rendered suspect by his placing the martyrdom under Marcus Aurelius (in former of loc. cit. above).

4. Eusebius, Hist. eccles. 4. 25 (treatise against Marcion); 5. 20 (letters to Blastus On Schism, to Florinus On the Sole Sovereignty, or That God is not the Author of Evil; book On the Ogdoad, also for Florinus); 5. 24 (letter to Victor of Rome, dissuading him from violence against the Asiatic Churches, who wished to keep to their own tradition in dating Easter, instead of conforming to the Roman custom); 5. 26 (treatises On Knowledge, the Proof, and a collection of what were probably sermons); 5. 7 and frequent references (Adversus haereses).

5. Zahn argued that the Greek text of Irenaeus was probably extant in the sixteenth or seventeenth century; cf. Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 1878, p. 288-291 (Zahn); 1890, p. 155-158 (Ph. Meyer); Theologisches Literaturblatt 1893, p. 495-497 (Zahn).

6. The following description of the manuscript is abridged from the full one given in PO* 657 f.: Bound codex, on paper, 245 x 165 mm., in the writing called boloragir (“roundhand”), some titles in red ink. 383 sheets remain, but others are missing between nos. 7 and 8. Under the title “Proofs of the Apostolic Preaching” we have: 33^r-146^r the fourth book of Adversus haereses, 146^r-222^r the fifth book, and 222^r-262^r the Proof.

7. TU 31. 1 (1907): Des heiligen Irenaeus Schrift zum Erweise der apostolischen Verkündigung … in armenischer Version entdeckt, herausgegeben und ins Deutsche übersetzt von D. Karapet Ter Mekerttschian und Lic. D. Erwand Ter Minasseantz, mit einem Nachwort und Bemerkungen von Ad. Harnack.

   Though this was the editio princeps, there was no description of the manuscript (this was supplied when the text was republished, cf. preceding note), and no apparatus criticus, though it is clear from the translation that several emendations were adopted (emendations were referred to in the margin of the republished translation, cf. next note but one). The German translation was in the circumstances a highly meritorious achievement, and not all the criticisms later directed against it (e.g. by Weber, cf. n. 10 to Introd. below) were justified; but inevitably it left much to be desired, and this fact hampered Harnack in his annotations.

   The Armenian text (without version) of A.H. 4-5 was published by Ter Minasseantz in TU 35. 2 (1910).

8. Patrologia Orientalis 12. 5 (ed. R. Graffin—F. Nau, Paris 1919) 655-731: S. Irenaeus …, The Proof of the Apostolic Preaching …, Armenian version edited and translated by His Lordship the Bishop Karapet Ter Měkěrttschian and the Rev. Dr. S. G. Wilson, with the co-operation of H.R.H. Prince Maxe of Saxony, D.D. and D.C.L. For all that, the version is not infrequently at fault—though it presents several improvements on the original German one—and is further marred by strange misprints.

   Tixeront-Barthoulot (cf. n. 11 to Introd. below) is reprinted (747-803) as an appendix to this edition.

9. The revised German version was published in Leipzig, 1908; I have not, however, seen it.

   The Russian version of Professor N. I. Sagarda (the “Sagrada” of PO* 655 is an error): Novo-otkrytoe proizvedenie sv. Irineä Lionskago: Dokazateljstvo apostoljskoj propovēdi, published in Hristianskoe čtenie 87 (1907): 476-491 = foreword, 664-691 = c. 1-50, 853-881 = c. 51-100 and closing remarks. This version was made not from the Armenian, but from the German translation of EP*. Hence its independent value lies only in the competent introduction and notes.

10. German version: Bibliothek der Kirchenväter 4 (Kempten—Munich 1912): Des hl. Irenaeus Schrift zum Erweis der apostolischen Verkündigung, aus dem Armenischen übersetzt von Dr. Simon Weber, o. Prof. an der Universität Freiburg i. Br.

    The German of this version is superior to that of the first German version, and the text had in the meantime been subjected to discussion; not all the changes so introduced, however, are correct (several were later abandoned by Weber himself).

    Controversy: Zeitschrift für neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 14 (1913) 258-262 (Ter Minasseantz); Der Katholik 94. 1 (1914) 9-44 (Weber); Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 35 (1914) 255-260, and 442 as note after the following (W. Lüdtke); ibid. 438-441 (Weber).

    Latin version: Sancti Irenaei Demonstratio Apostolicae Praedicationis … Ex armeno vertit, prolegomenis illustravit, notis locupletavit Simon Weber … (Freiburg i. Br. 1917). The version is, apart from one or two slips, accurate, but in the nature of things often obscure, ambiguous, or even positively misleading. Though this version is the best means available whereby one who does not know Armenian can form an idea of how the text expressed itself, Latin is not a suitable medium for such a verbal transposition. A Greek version on the same lines would have been more useful. (Lüdtke, loc. cit. above, 256, did in fact reconstruct in Greek the second half of c. 34, as a means of judging the merits of the rival German versions).

11. Recherches de science religieuse 6 (1916) 361-432; version and annotations by Barthoulot, introduction and additional notes by Tixeront. Reprinted as appendix to PO*, from which it is cited in these notes. The version is very free, and in some places rather a paraphrase than a translation, and the translator has in several places been misled by lack of acquaintance with the peculiar Armenian style of the text.

    A new French version is now being prepared, for the series “Sources chrétiennes.”

12. English version: J. Armitage Robinson: St. Irenaeus: The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching (Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge: London and New York, 1920). A good version.

    Dutch version: H. U. Meyboom (Leyden 1920). I have not seen this version, and take the reference from J. Quasten, Patrology 1 (Utrecht-Brussels 1950) 293.

    Italian version: Ubaldo Faldati: S. Ireneo, Esposizione della Predicazione Apostolica (Roma 1923). A very accurate version, on the whole.

13. Hist. eccles. 5. 26 (cf. § 13 f. of Introd.).

14. This point is developed by Weber, BK* p.v.

15. Cf. n. 314.

16. Cf. § 28 of Introd., and n. 51 thereto.

17. A.H. 3. 3. 3.

18. Though O. Bardenhewer (Geschichte der altkirchlichen Literatur 1 [2nd ed. Freiburg i. Br. 1913] 409) and others admit the hypothesis that the Proof may have been written contemporaneously with the last two books of Adversus haereses, there are several points which have seemed to others to suggest that some time elapsed between the two works. Thus Faldati (F* 44) sees in the difference between the exegesis of Isa. 11. 6 f. in c. 60 of the Proof and that in A.H. 5. 32 f. a profound change in the author's views, which must have been the work of a considerable lapse of time; but I do not find this conclusion to be inevitable; cf. n. 270.

    F. R. M. Hitchcock (Journal of Theological Studies 9 [1908] 286) sees in the statement of c. 48, that kings are Christ's enemies and persecutors of His name, a reference to the persecution under Septimius Severus, and so would put the composition of the Proof at the end of Irenaeus's life. But the bishop of Lyons did not have to wait for the persecution under Severus in order to make such a statement.

    The reference to Adversus haereses in c. 99 of the Proof comes after the mention of the first of the three classes of heretics there mentioned. Now the other two classes also are dealt with in Adversus haereses, but whereas the first class is treated of in books 1 and 2 (though the principal refutation is in book 4), the other two are mentioned in books 3 and 4. Hence the reference to the earlier work does not necessarily imply that the whole work had been finished, indeed the restriction of the reference to the first class might be taken as a suggestion that only the first two books had been completed. It seems, however, on the whole more probable that Adversus haereses was completed some time before the Proof; but nothing can be affirmed with certainty in this respect.

19. The fragments are in H. Jordan: Armenische Irenaeusfragmente, TU 36. 3 (1913) Fr. 6, 13, 20, 25 (all from the same passage, the beginning of c. 31—cf. n. 156), and Fr. 7e (from c. 40—cf. n. 195). Cf. next paragraph of Introd., and the notes thereto.

20. “Stephen the Philosopher”: Fr. 20-22 of Jordan, op. cit. in preceding note (20 is from the Proof, c. 31—cf. n. 156; 21 is from Adversus haereses, and 22 from some other work of Irenaeus).

    “Catholicos Sahak”: ibid., Fr. 18 (= 22), 19 (= 21).

21. For this dating, cf. EP* p. iv-v. Ter Minasseantz, however, in the preface to the Armenian text of A.H. 4-5, in TU 35. 2 (1910) p. v, puts the period of translation at 650-750.

22. N. Akinean, HAm. 24 (1910) 205, puts 604 as the latest date, because of a quotation in a letter of Varthan Kherdogh, and even suggested that the latter was the translator, between 590 and 604.

    In 1911 Ter Mekerttschian found yet another manuscript, bearing the title “Seal of the Faith,” with a quotation from the Proof, distorted however into a Monophysite sense (Fr. 6 of Jordan, op. cit. in n. 19 above; from c. 31—cf. n. 156). This manuscript can be dated to the Catholicate of Comitas, which seems to have been about 611-628 (dating of Ter Minasseantz, TU, Neue Folge 11 [1904] 60-62).

    Weber (L* 9-10) suggested that Eznik (early fifth century) knew both the Proof and Adversus haereses; but this would prove nothing, since Eznik used Greek sources directly.

23. Jordan, op. cit. 203; similarly Ter Mekerttschian in PO* 656.

    In addition to the quotations from the Proof and from the last two books of Adversus haereses, of which we have the Armenian version, there are also Armenian quotations in the same distinctive style from the earlier books of Adversus haereses, so that it is clear that the whole work was translated at the same time. Cf. Jordan, op. cit. 204 f.

24. C. F. Conybeare, American Journal of Theology 16 (1911) 631 f.; more fully in Huschardzan (Vienna 1911) 193-203 (in English).

25. The classification of the periods of the “Hellenising” school of Armenian, the Proof etc. being assigned to the first period, was established by Manandean in his work Yunaban dproc’ě ew nra zargac’man šrjannerě = “The Hellenising school and the phases of its development” in Armenian (Vienna 1928), which had appeared by instalments in HAm. 39 (1925) 225-232, 347-354, 539-548, 40 (1926) 15-23, 121-129, 209-216, 305-313, 437-445, 525-533, 41 (1927) 16-23, 109-116, 289-301, 417-425, 559-569, 42 (1928) 25-30, 109-120, 205-213, 303-310, 401-407.

    When Manandean wrote, it was still thought that the school must be dated in the fifth century; since that time, however, this view has been generally abandoned (cf. rest of this paragraph of Introd.). There is a concise account of the development of the Hellenising school, embodying the conclusions of the discussion on the dating, by Akinean, in HAm. 42 (1932) 271-292 (in Armenian; German résumé 376-380); and a brief account in English, concerned especially with the first group (to which the Proof belongs) in H. Lewy, The Pseudo-Philonic De Jona (Studies and Documents 7, London 1936) 9-16.

26. In the early period of the controversy over the dating of Moses of Khoren the principal opponent of the traditional date was A. Carrière, Nouvelles sources de Moïse de Khoren: études critiques (Vienne 1893); Nouvelles sources de Moïse de Khoren: supplément (Vienne 1894); or HAm. 6 (1892) 250; 7 (1893) 134, 178, 309; 8 1894) 53, 210. C. F. Conybeare: “The date of Moses of Khoren,” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 10 (1901) 489-504, maintained the traditional dating; so also in HAm. 16 (1902) 1, 85, 129, 193, 236; 17 (1903) 30, 33, 152, 215, 317, 325.

    For an account of the question in English, cf. H. Lewy, op. cit. and two articles in Byzantion 11 (1936) 81-96 and 593-596; in the former of these two articles are further references to earlier literature on the subject.

    Other modern opponents of the traditional dating: Akinean, Lewond Erec’ ew Movses Xorenac’i = “Leontius the Priest and Moses of Khoren” (Vienna 1930): suggests identification of “Moses” with eighth-century Leontius; and Manandean, Xorenac’u areīcvaci lucumě = “The solution of the problem of Khorenatzi” (Erevan 1934): puts Moses at beginning of second half of ninth century.

    Against the two works mentioned in the preceding paragraph: S. Malkhasean: Xorenac’u areīcvaci šurjě = “Concerning the Problem of Khorenatzi” (Erevan 1940).

    For the traditional dating, against Lewy's articles in Byzantion, cf. Adontz, after each of those articles (that is, Byzantion 11 [1936] 97-100, 597-599), and Sur la date de l’Histoire de l’Arménie de Moïse de Chorène (from Byzantion, Brussels 1936). Cf. also Abeghian (following note).

27. Akinean, Eëlišē Vardapet ew iwr Patmut’iwnn hayoc’ paterazmin = “Elisaeus Vardapet and his History of the Armenian War,” which appeared in instalments in HAm. 45 (1931) 21-49, 129-201, 321-340, 393-414, 449-473, 585-617, 677-690; 46 (1932) 293-298, 385-401, 545-576; 47 (1933) 33-56, 641-679; 48 (1934) 353-414.

    A recent, highly authoritative, history of Armenian literature is that of Manuk Abeghian. I have not seen the Armenian original, but only the abridged Russian version, Istoria drevnearmänskoj literatury (Erevan 1948 [vol. 1]). He here maintains the traditional dating (mid-fifth century) for both Moses of Khoren (203-209) and Elisaeus (244 f.).

28. Akinean, HAm. 46 (1932) 271-292, referred to in n. 25 above; cf. also Lewy, op. cit. at end of same note.

29. EP* vi-vii; PO* 656.

    Latin intermediary: Y. Awger, Bazmavep 67 (1909) 59-66, 145-160; and cf. Akinean, HAm. 24 (1910) 202 f.; 25 (1911) 305-310; also W. Lüdtke, Theologische Literaturzeitung 36 (1911) 541.

30. The indications of a Syriac intermediary were: (a) the occurrence in Adversus haereses of the name “Elisabeth” in the form Elišabet’, with the Syriac sound š instead of the Greek s; (b) the quotation of Zach. 9. 9, in c. 65 of the Proof, not according to the Septuagint but in a form agreeing rather with the Syriac version; (c) the rendering of the name of the prophet Malachy, on the two occasions in which it occurs in the Adversus haereses (4. 17. 5 and 4. 20. 2, corresponding to 4. 29. 5 and 4. 34. 2 respectively in the Armenian text as in TU 35. 2, which uses Harvey's numbering), as “angel,” as if it were the Syriac common noun mala’kâ, “angel, messenger.”

    The first and second of these may be neglected, since (a) such forms as Elišabet’ are common in Armenian, and are to be found even in works certainly translated directly from the Greek (cf. Akinean, HAm. 24 [1910] 201); and (b) the quotation is not taken from the Old Testament directly, but from Matt. 21. 5 or from a collection of texts (cf. § 38 of Introd. and n. 280).

    The third point is more difficult to account for. It is true that “Malachy” is not a normal proper name, but a sort of pen name (cf. Mal. 3. 1: Behold I send my angel … etc.) and so might be rendered “Angel” or “Messenger” in much the same way as “Qoheleth” is rendered “Preacher” (Ecclesiastes); and that the prophet's name is in fact rendered αγγελοs in the Septuagint (Mal. 1. 1); so that Irenaeus might well have used that word. The difficulty is, that he does not in fact seem to have done so, since the Latin version of Adversus haereses has in both places “Malachias.” Hence the rendering “angel” of the Armenian version presents a problem; but it does not force the conclusion that the version was made through a Syriac intermediary.

    The principal indication of translation directly from the Greek is the style of the version. This is a point which cannot conveniently be documented here; let it suffice to say that the version clearly belongs to a class of servile renderings of Greek texts, so closely modelled on the Greek as to justify the conjecture that they were intended rather as “keys” to the original text than as “translations” in the normal sense. One peculiarity which tells especially against the possibility of a Syriac intermediary is the imitation of the Greek “genitive absolute,” of which there are many examples in the version of the Proof. This construction is foreign to Armenian, but can be accounted for as a mechanical reproduction of the Greek in a “key”; it is however quite incredible that it can have been transmitted through the Syriac, in which such a construction is incapable of exact reproduction.

    Against the use of the form Elišabet’, mentioned above, may be set the fact that proper names in general appear in a form which corresponds not to Syriac but to Greek—for example, Sem, Messias, Bethlehem. More telling still is the manner in which the corrupt text of Gen. 1. 1 is transcribed in c. 43: baresit’, sament’ares, not barešit’, šament’ares. A Syriac version would have transcribed back into š a Greek s standing for š, and an Armenian version from that Syriac would have reproduced this š; transcription in Armenian as s argues that the transcription is directly from the Greek transcription. (The corruption of the text in question has also been alleged as an argument against transmission through the Syriac; but corruption may have arisen in the transmission of the version as originally made to the manuscript in which we have it.)

    Finally, in c. 25, we read, concerning the Passover, which is put forward as a type of the Passion, “the name of this mystery is kirk’.” Kirk’ is a hapax legomenon which seems, as Vardanian pointed out, HAm. 24 (1910) 303, to be an attempt to render Greek αsχα in the sense “Passion,” as if it were related to πάsχειν “suffer” (Armenian krel). Now, any Armenian translator must surely have known that the word was a proper name “Pasch,” Armenian Pasek’; but one can understand how a translator from the Greek, meeting the word here, might have rendered it for the nonce kirk’, either thinking that it was in origin a Greek word connected with πάsχειν, or at least thinking that Irenaeus was playing on the similarity of the two words (as indeed he almost certainly was: cf. A.H. 4. 10. 1: cuius et diem passionis non ignoravit [sc. Moyses] sed figuratim praenuntiavit eum, Pascha nominans; et in eadem ipsa, quae ante tantum temporis a Moyse praedicata est, passus est Dominus adimplens Pascha). A Syriac translator from the Greek would surely not have attempted any such rendering, even if he saw that there was a play on the similarity of the words in Greek, for Pascha is itself a Syriac word (the Greek having taken this word, like many others, not in the Hebrew form—pesach—but in the Aramaic = Syriac form); while an Armenian translating from the Syriac would surely not even have reflected that there had been such a play on words in the Greek original.

31. For a fuller, but brief, discussion in English of the style of the “Hellenising” school, cf. Lewy, op. cit. 16-24.

32. For examples, cf. Conybeare's articles, references in n. 24 above; this was the peculiarity on which he based his identification of the style of the Armenian Irenaeus with that of the Armenian Philo. Many such “doublets” are mentioned in the notes to the present version: cf. the following paragraph of the Introd., and the Index under “doublets.”

33. It is often exceedingly difficult to determine the correct division and grouping of phrases. As an example of a particular difficulty may be mentioned the use of expressions imitating in various manners the Greek “genitive absolute.” Such a construction is foreign to Armenian (cf. above, n. 30), and in several places, where normal Armenian usage would demand a certain interpretation of an expression, it is in fact probable, or at least possible, that the expression should be understood as an “absolute” construction, with a sense sometimes quite different from that which would be demanded by normal usage—a difficulty which is sometimes increased by the fact that in Armenian the genitive and dative of substantives are identical in form. For examples of such ambiguities, cf. n. 43, 195, 200, 201, 222, 249, 341; in the first three of these cases the difference of interpretation is considerable.

34. There is a list of textual defects in Weber, L* 11.

    The editio princeps has no apparatus criticus (an omission for which the editors were taken to task by Weber, Der Katholik 94 [1914] 10), and there are few emendations mentioned in the republication in PO*. The revised edition of the German version of EP* referred to emendations proposed by Nestle and Conybeare; others are to be found in Akinean's article, “St. Irenaeus in Armenian Literature,” HAm. (1910) 200-208, in Vardanian's articles on the new words in the Armenian Irenaeus, ibid. 281-284, 301-306, and on emendations to the Proof, ibid. 326-328, in Weber's articles in Theologische Quartalschrift 91 (1909) 560-573 and 93 (1911) 162 f., and his “Randglossen,” Der Katholik 94 (1914) 9-44, and in Lüdtke's reply thereto, Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 35 (1914) 255-260, and elsewhere. Weber's Latin version (L*) mentions most emendations made up to its publication. I think I have mentioned in the notes to this version all the important emendations proposed; and I have suggested one or two new ones.

35. Eusebius, Hist. eccles. 5. 26.

36. So too Faldati has for title “Esposizione …,” though he remarks (F* 21 n. 1) that “dimostrazione” would be more accurate as a rendering of the word Επιδειξοs. The Armenian title is C’uyc’ arak’elakan k’arozut’eann.

37. Eusebius, Hist. eccles. 5. 26.

    The name Marcianus ought doubtless to have been englished “Marcian,” but that the latter form agrees in sound with “Marcion.”

38. Mart. Polycarpi 20.

    Identification of author of Martyrium Polycarpi with addressee of Proof was suggested by J. B. Lightfoot, Apostolic Fathers 2. 3 (London 1889) 398 f.; he was followed by, for example, T. Zahn (Realenzyklopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche, s. v. “Irenaeus”). Harnack remarks (EP* 54) that identification is unlikely, the reading “Marcion” being more probable for the name of the author of the Martyrium. F. X. Funk—K. Bihlmeyer, Die Apostolischen Väter (Tübingen 1924), also read “Marcion.”

39. Insistence on abolition of Old Law: c. 35, 87, 89, 90, 94, 96. For a probable explanation, cf. § 37 of Introd. The suggestion that Marcianus was a recent convert from Judaism was made, to account for this insistence, by F. Diekamp in his review of EP*, Theologische Revue 6 (1907) 245, and is regarded as probable by O. Bardenhewer, Geschichte der altkirchlichen Literatur 1 (2nd ed. 1913) 411.

40. “care of souls”: c. 1 (cf. n. 6).

    J. Kunze, on the other hand, says it is clear from the whole tenor of the Proof that Marcianus was a layman (Theologisches Literaturblatt 28 [1907] 26). Similarly Sagarda, who adds however that there is insufficient ground for any certainty in the matter (S* 486).

41. The confusion and repetitiveness of Irenaeus's exposition is very noticeable in Adversus haereses.

42. Cf. § 45 of Introd. for résumé of probable solution to these “problems.”

43. So Harnack in EP* 55, G. Rauschen in Literarische Rundschau 34 (1908) 468, and especially P. Drews in Zeitschrift für neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 8 (1907) 226-233, who compares the Proof with Augustine's De catechizandis rudibus and with the Constitutiones apostolicae. Similarly Sagarda says, “Irenaeus speaks not as a polemist, not even as a scholar, but as pastor and catechete” (S* 487).

44. c. 1.

45. c. 1 f. and 99 f.

46. The word rendered “in its integrity” in c. 1, and similarly rendered elsewhere, is arolj, meaning “entire” in the sense “sound, healthy, lively”; cf. n. 4 and the parallel Tit. 2. 8 there quoted.

47. So Bardenhewer, op. cit. 1. 409, 411. So too Tixeront (PO* 752) and others.

48. BK* p. xiv.

49. G. Rauschen, Literarische Rundschau 34 (1908) 468.

50. For Irenaeus's poor opinion of fanciful exegesis and of “mystic numbers,” cf. respectively A.H. 1. 8. 1 and 2. 24 f.

51. Adversus haereses (or Contra haereses), is given by Eusebius, Hist. eccles. 5. 7. 1 etc., its full title, which we find also in c. 99 of the Proof: α Eλεγχοs καì ινανροπ ινs ψευδοννμου γνωsεωs, a title which may be variously rendered in English: for example, also “Critique and refutation …” The expression “knowledge falsely so called” is taken from 1 Tim. 6. 20. “Knowledge” (in this sense) is in Greek γνωsιs, and from the related adjective γνωsτικós are derived the words “Gnostic,” “Gnosticism.”

52. Marcion's system, though it agrees in many general points with those of Gnostics properly so called, is in detail and in spirit as different from them as is orthodox Christianity. Most Gnostic systems, so far as can be judged, were on the intellectual level of the various bogus -osophies which are their modern counterparts; Marcion's, on the other hand, was the work of a misguided genius. He founded a hierarchy, and his sect is said to have persisted into modern times, while other Gnostic systems have been artificially revived in modern times; cf. F. R. M. Hitchcock, Irenaeus of Lugdunum (Cambridge 1914) 332 f.; E. C. Blackman, Marcion and his Influence (London 1948).

53. On the word aeon, cf. n. 23 to the text.

54. δημιουργós in Greek means “craftsman, artisan” and was a normal term in Greek philosophy to denote the “creator” or rather “fashioner” of the ordered world. The word seems to have been used in the Proof (and in Adversus haereses) of the “creative” Word (c. 38, cf. n. 185); it is used of God in A. H. 4. 1. 2 and 4. 20. 4.

55. So in the Proof, c. 4-7, 45.

56. Identity of God the Father and Creator: c. 3-5, 11, 99; He is universal Lord, Judge and Father: c. 8.

57. So in the Proof, c. 5, 34, 39; for an echo of Plato on the world-soul, cf. n. 171.

58. So in the Proof, c. 7, 45.

59. “the Son,” cf. c. 5 (and n. 32 f. thereto); “inscrutable generation,” cf. c. 70 and n. 301 thereto; “always with the Father,” cf. “His Son for ever” (c. 10), and His pre-existence, c. 51 f.; and for the question of the Word's eternity and of the Δóγοs Ενδιάθετοs and Δóγοs προΦορικós, cf. c. 43 and n. 205 thereto.

60. Proof, c. 12 (in Paradise), 44 (Abraham), 45 (Jacob, and explicit statement that theophanies are of the Son), 46 (Moses).

61. Cf. § 33 of Introd. (and n. 70 thereto).

62. Cf. § 36 of Introd.

63. This belief in a “seeming” body is called “docetism,” and its holders are called “docetes” (from Greek δοκειν, “seem”).

64. Frequent reference to Christ's birth of the Virgin, of the seed of Abraham and of David; and cf. especially c. 33, 38 f.

65. So in the Proof c. 5-8, 49; for the identification Spirit = Wisdom, cf. n. 33 to c. 5; Scripture is the work of the Spirit: c. 49: “it is not a man who utters the prophecy; but the Spirit of God … spoke in the prophets”; c. 2: “the Holy Spirit says through the mouth of David”; c. 24: (God testified to Abraham) “saying through the Holy Spirit in the Scriptures”; c. 73: “the Spirit of Christ, who spoke in the other prophets about Him, now also through David says.” If Irenaeus sometimes attributes the words of Scripture to the Word, this is not because “the Word articulates the Spirit, and … gives their message to the prophets” (c. 5), but because in the particular passages so attributed to the Word the Spirit is speaking “on the part of Christ” (c. 49), and using the first person in uttering words to be attributed to the Son (so c. 34 “the Word says through Isaias: I refuse not …”; similarly e. g. c. 50, 68); or because the Scripture is reporting the words of the Son in a theophany (so e. g. in c. 9).

66. Cf. c. 11, 14.

67. The Spirit in creation and in man, cf. § 33, 34 of Introd. He leads to the Son, cf. § 35 of Introd.

68. Divinity of the Son: Proof c. 47; cf. n. 223 thereto.

69. c. 99.

70. “hands”: cf. account of creation in c. 11. In the parallel passage A.H. 4. Praef. 4 we have “with His own hands, that is, with the Son and the Spirit”; so too in A.H. 4. 20. 1, 5. 1. 3, 5. 6. 1, 5. 28. 4 the Son and the Holy Spirit are called the two hands of the Father. Similarly Theophilus of Antioch, Ad Autol. 2. 18. Cf. also Proof c. 26 (and n. 140 thereto) for a possible reference to the Spirit as the “finger” of God.

    “Image” and “likeness” were commonly distinguished by the Greek fathers; the statement that the “image” is ineffaceable, but the “likeness” lost by the Fall was supported by the allegation that the latter word was never used of man in the Scripture after the account of the Fall; but this is a mere chance in the Septuagint version; the Hebrew word d^emût, to which it corresponds in Gen. 1. 26, occurs also in Gen. 5, 1, where however the Septuagint renders by εικων (“image”) instead of ιμοίωsιs (“likeness”) as in Gen. 1. 26.

    For this distinction in Irenaeus, cf. especially A.H. 5. 6. 1, where it is said that the “image” is in the frame (plasma) of man and the “likeness” in the spirit; with which cf. Proof, c. 11 (n. 65) for the original creation, and c. 97 (n. 397) for the restoration; for the “image” as that of the Son, c. 22: “the ‘image’ is the Son of God, in whose image man was made”; for the “likeness” as given by the Spirit, c. 5: “the Spirit, who … formed man to the likeness of God.” (And for free will as especial point of resemblance of man to God, c. 11, n. 66.)

71. Man created free and lord of world and its angels: c. 11, 12; immortality, c. 15; “self-mastery” as especial resemblance to God, c. 11 (n. 66); man intended to develop, etc., c. 12 (n. 70); the Fall and its effects, c. 16 f.; loss of immortality, c. 15, 37 f.; “image and likeness,” cf. n. 70 above; Incarnation as restoration, cf. § 36 of Introd.

72. A.H. 5. 9. 1 f.; Plato, Phaedrus 246a; 253c; cf. following note.

73. All three elements necessary, cf. A.H. 5. 9. 1 f.; 5. 6. 1, etc. Body and soul, cf. Proof c. 2 (n. 8); necessity of Spirit, c. 7, 14, 41 f., 89; Spirit a special “godlikeness,” cf. n. 70 above, and A.H. 5. 9. 1-3, 5. 10. 1; 4. 6. 1; 4. 8. 1; cf. also c. 42 and n. 201.

74. Body also part of man, c. 2 (n. 8); and A.H. 5. 6. 1: “the soul and the spirit can be part of man, but by no means ‘a man’”; cf. also insistence on “incorruption” (cf. § 36 of Introd.). All things created by the one God, c. 3 f., 10.

75. “Material”: Greek νλικós < νλη, “matter”; (“earthly”: χοικós, “carnal”: sαρκικós); “sensual”: ψυχικós < ψυχν, “soul”; Latin homo animalis; “spiritual”: πνευματικós < πνενμα, “spirit.”

    Cf. 1 Cor. 2. 14 f.: But the sensual man perceiveth not these things that are of the Spirit of God … But the spiritual man judgeth all things; and 3. 1: And I, breathren, could not speak to you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal; and Jude 19: sensual men, having not the spirit.

76. Not that the Gnostics were necessarily licentious; some of them were, if we are to believe Irenaeus; but others were ascetical. The Marcionites in particular affected an extreme asceticism.

77. 1 Cor. 15. 50, on which text in A.H. 5. 9. 1 f. Irenaeus explains the necessity of spirit as well as soul and body. For the Gnostics, “flesh and blood” did not participate in salvation.

78. 1 Tim. 1. 9, quoted in the Proof, c. 35.

79. Proof, c. 14 (spirit knows no evil), 89 f. (newness of spirit supersedes the law); 61, 95 f.

80. Proof, c. 8.

81. Cf. n. 70 above.

82. Proof, c. 5 (n. 34).

83. Proof, c. 5-7.

84. Proof, c. 7.

85. “Recapitulation” or “summing-up,” Greek άνακεταλαίωsιs. The corresponding verb is rendered “re-establish” in Douay in Eph. 1. 10: in the dispensation of the fulness of times, to re-establish all things in Christ. In Irenaeus (cf. rest of this paragraph) the sense is rather “re-establish.” Principal references in the Proof: c. 30 (end), 31-34, 37 f. (and cf. parallels cited in notes thereto).

86. “Communion”: Armenian hasarakut’iwn miabanut’ean, literally “community of agreement,” or more freely rendered, “terms of good fellowship,” “friendly relations.” In A. H. 4. 20. 4, however, (4. 34. 4 in Harvey's numbering, used in the edition of the Armenian text, TU 35. 2), the same expression corresponds to the Latin version's communio. Elsewhere (A.H. 4. 14. 2, Harvey's 4. 25. 2) twice the word communio has as its Armenian correspondence hasarakut’iwn alone (cf. n. 195, and variants in fragments of c. 31: n. 156). In the Proof, c. 6; and, with explicit reference to “incorruptibility,” c. 31, 40.

87. Cf. Proof, c. 7, 31, 39, 40, 55; and the continuation of 1 Cor. 15. 50, cited above (n. 77); after stating that flesh and blood cannot possess the kingdom of heaven, the apostle goes on: neither shall corruption possess incorruption.

    Not merely the spiritual principle, but the whole man to be saved, cf. A.H. 5. 6. 1, cited in n. 74 above.

88. F. Loofs, in his posthumously published work on the sources of Irenaeus, Theophilus von Antiochien Adversus Marcionem und die anderen theologischen Quellen bei Irenaeus, TU 46. 2 (1930), regards Irenaeus's reputation for original thought as exaggerated, and suggests that he reproduces incompatible views from his various sources. There is however much that is controvertible in the views expressed in that work (including, for example, the suggestion of “binitarianism” alluded to in § 32 of this Introd.

89. J. Rendel Harris, Expositor 7. 3 (1907) 246-358 (on the Proof) and 7. 2 (1906) 385-409 (on “Testimonies”); these articles are repeated, along with other matter, in the same author's book, Testimonies, 2 vols. (Cambridge 1916, 1920).

90. Harnack, EP* 58; Tixeront, PO* 771 n. 3.

91. Description of Leviticus, c. 26; of Deuteronomy, c. 28. Note the inaccuracy of the Deuteronomy quotations in c. 29 (n. 152, 153).

92. For composite quotations cf., in the Proof, c. 24 (n. 127), 29 (n. 152), 43 (n. 206), 79 (n. 324), 88 (n. 352).

93. For false attribution: c. 43 (n. 206), 65 (n. 280: here note parallel in Justin gives different false attribution), 72 (n. 307), 97 (n. 396).

    Apocryphal quotations from rubrics or glosses: cf. c. 43 (n. 207), 68 (n. 289).

94. Cf. c. 5 (n. 31), 77 (n. 318); but the fact that the former is a commonplace and the latter inaccurately quoted lends support to the suggestion that Irenaeus may here be quoting from memory; c. 86 (n. 346), but here the fact that the quotation echoes two different prophets might have accounted for the expression “the prophets”; cf. also c. 38 and 62 (Amos, cited also in Acts), 72 (Ps. 20), 86 (Isaias, cited also in Romans).

95. C. 54 (n. 247), 56 (n. 251); cf. also Isa. 53. 4 quoted c. 67 as in Matt. 8. 17, and (in longer citation) c. 68 as in LXX (n. 283, 288).

96. Cf. c. 35 (n. 176), 63 (n. 277), 65 (n. 280: note that the different false attribution in the Justin parallel suggests common source, not the gospel), 67 (n. 283), 93 (n. 365). In Rendel Harris's theory this agreement with the New Testament is due to the use by the latter also of the book of “Testimonies against the Jews.”

97. C. 81 (n. 328).

98. C. 8 (n. 55). In A.H. 4. 5. 2 correct attribution to Christ of the gospel's addition.

99. A.H. 3. 21. 1-4. In the Proof, c. 69, there is a notable omission which is to be accounted for by use of the Septuagint (n. 295).

100. In c. 3 (n. 18) I have even ventured to emend a quotation into agreement with the Massoretic text.

     The immediate source not the New Testament: cf. n. 96 above.

     The style of the translation of the Proof—a key to the Greek original—makes it reasonable to suppose that the translator has simply translated Irenaeus's quotations as they stood in the Greek original, instead of substituting—as translators not uncommonly did—the (Armenian) version of the Scriptural passage quoted. In one or two places, it is clear that the translator has retained peculiarities of the original (cf. e. g. n. 324 to c. 79 of text).

     It is interesting to note in the Proof a couple of striking agreements with the so-called “Western text” of the New Testament in the quotations of Mich. 5. 2 (= Matt. 2. 6; c. 63, n. 277) and Isa. 52. 7 (= Rom. 10. 15; c. 86, n. 346); and cf. n. 264, 329 (Codex Bezae).

101. Jeremias: c. 78 (n. 320); David: c. 68 (n. 289).

102. Cf. c. 9 (n. 60), 20 (n. 105), 43 (n. 207), 57 (n. 257).

103. C. 4 (n. 28); A.H. 4. 20. 2.

104. C. 18 (n. 100).

105. C. 9 (n. 57); other “echoes” of Ascensio Isaiae are c. 10 (n. 62) and 84 (n. 338).

106. Abraham: c. 24 (n. 124); star: c. 58 (n. 264).

107. The “elders”: or “ancients” or “presbyters” (οι πρεsβντεροι, presbyteri, seniores), a word commonly so used, and regularly added by Irenaeus when he refers to the preceding generation of tradition, the “disciples of the apostles”; so in the Proof, c. 3 and (without the expression “disciples of the apostles”) c. 61. In A. H., 2. 22. 5, 3. 2. 2, 5. 5. 1, 5. 33. 3, 5. 36. 1 and 2. For the word “elders,” cf. Ancient Christian Writers 6 (The Didache etc.) 107 ff.

     Chiliasm: c. 61; for an account of this doctrine, see n. 270. It has recently been called in doubt whether Irenaeus did in fact hold millenarian views; cf. the article of V. Cremers, “Het millenarisme van Irenaeus,” Bijdragen 1 (1938) 28-80. Even on the millenarianism of Papias doubts have been expressed, by L. Gry, “Le Papias des belles promesses messianiques,” Vivre et Penser 3 (1943-4) 112-124.

108. C. 74 (n. 314); A.H. 2. 22.5.

109. Chiliasm (in Proof, c. 61, n. 270) in Justin, cf. esp. Dial. 80 f.; Papias, cf. (Eusebius, Hist. eccles. 3. 39. 12 and) A.H. 5. 33. 4; but cf. end of n. 107 above.

110. Papias and chiliasm, cf. preceding paragraph of Introd.

     Polycarp quoted by name: A.H. 3. 3. 4; echo in Proof, c. 95 (n. 376). In the last postcript to the Martyrium Polycarpi in the Moscow manuscript we are told that Irenaeus “wrote a solid refutation of every heresy, and, besides, handed down the ecclesiastical and Catholic rule of faith, just as he had received it from the saint,” that is, from Polycarp. The “solid refutation of every heresy” refers obviously to Adversus haereses; it is possible that the “ecclesiastical and Catholic rule of faith” handed down by Irenaeus as he received it from Polycarp refers to the Proof.

111. Cf. Index.

112. Cf. Index. In his Introduction to the Proof (AR* 6-23) Robinson gives a detailed comparison between certain parts of the Proof and parallel passages in Justin (c. 57 and Apol. 1. 32; c. 44 f. and Dial. 56, etc.; and c. 53 as “cleared up” by Apol. 2. 6). So also F. R. M. Hitchcock, Journal of Theological Studies 9 (1908) 284-289, lists several parallels between the Proof and Justin.

     It must be noted that there are many differences of Scriptural reading between Justin and Irenaeus; in the Proof, cf. n. 277, 302, 317, 318, 320, 322; cf. different attribution, n. 280.

113. Cf. § 38 above, and Harris (references in n. 89 above). Loofs, op. cit. (n. 88 above) 5 n. 1, thinks the parallels between Justin and Irenaeus may be attributed to what was already traditional.

     A notable difference between the two lies in Irenaeus's frequent use of St. Paul, who Justin never mentions or quotes.

114. Two particular examples, taken from the Proof, given by Harris, Expositor 7. 3 (1907) 255-257, and Testimonies 1. 68 f.: in c. 57, after quoting Gen. 49. 10 f., Irenaeus continues, “He is also the expectation of the nations, of those who hope in Him …”; in Apol. 1. 32, after quoting Gen. 49. 10 f., Justin passes on to a composite quotation (Num. 34. 17, Isa. 11. 1, Isa. 11. 10; the whole attributed to “Isaias”) ending and in His arm shall the nations hope. In c. 72, Irenaeus applies Isa. 57. 1 to the death of Christ and also of “those who believe in Him and like Him are persecuted and slain”; in Apol. 1. 48, Justin refers the same passage to Christ and “those who hope in Him.” In both these cases it is more likely that the “echo” in Irenaeus is due to an adjacent text in the common source, than to a reminiscence of Justin.

115. Reference to treatise against Marcion, A.H. 4. 6. 2; Loofs, op. cit. (n. 88 above) 5.

116. Proof, c. 12, 14; Theophilus, Ad Autol. 2. 25.

117. Account of Aristo, Origen, C. Cels. 4. 52.

     For references to echoes of apologists, cf. Index.

118. A.H. 3. 3. 3.

119. Holy Spirit and Scripture, cf. n. 65 above; fourth gospel, c. 43, 94; trinitarian formula, c. 3.

     Interesting also is what seems to be an allusion to the formula of exorcism “in the name of Jesus Christ, crucified under Pontius Pilate” (c. 97 n. 393).

120. E. g. H. Jordan, Theologischer Literaturbericht 30 (1907) 78. (Weber, L* 13, refers to Krüger in the same sense, but as his reference, which is false, is to the same volume of the same periodical, it may well be a mistake for Jordan as above.)

121. Good works: c. 2, 98; dogmatic faith: c. 1-3, 100; redeemed man: c. 61, 93, 94, 96.

122. C. 43 (n. 205).

123. Seven heavens, c. 9; Pontius Pilate, c. 74 (n. 314).

124. C. 61 (n. 270).

125. Adam and Eve, c. 12, 14; man lord of world and its angels, c. 11, 12; theophanies, c. 12, 44-46 (Sodom and Gomorrha, c. 44); decalogue, c. 96.

126. Sem and Japheth, c. 21, 24, 42; Adam and Christ, c. 32; Spirit and Wisdom, c. 5; distinction between Persons, c. 47.

127. There is an “Irenaean” Creed, drawn up from his works, at the end of F. R. M. Hitchcock, Irenaeus of Lugdunum (Cambridge 1914). See also J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Creeds (London 1950) 76-82.

Abbreviations

A.H. = Irenaeus, Adversus haereses (cited according to the division in Massuet's edition, which is that printed in Migne's Patrologia Graeca; the numbering is the same in Stieren's also).

AR* = J. Armitage Robinson's English Proof (cf. n.12 to Introd.)

BK* = Weber's German Proof (in the Bibliothek der Kirchenväter; cf. n. 10 to Introd.)

c. = chapter (of Proof).

EP* = editio princeps of Proof (cf. n. 7 to Introd.)

F* = Faldati's Italian Proof (cf. n. 12 to Introd.)

HAm. = Handes Amsorya (monthly journal of the Mechitarists of Vienna: in Armenian).

L* = Weber's Latin Proof (cf. n. 10 to Introd.)

LXX = the Septuagint version of the Old Testament (references to Rahlfs' edition).

n. = note, the reference being to the notes to the text, unless otherwise indicated.

PO* = edition of Proof in Patrologia Orientalis 12. 5; unless the context refers to Barthoulot or Tixeront, the reference is to the main body of the edition (Ter Mekerttschian) (cf. n. 8 to Introd.)

S* = Sagarda's Russian Proof (cf. n. 9 to Introd.)

TU = Texte und Untersuchungen (Leipzig) …