Guilt by Association Guilt by Association Heresy Catalogues in Early Christianity z Geoffrey S. Smith 1 1 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 © Oxford University Press 2015 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. CIP record is available from the Library of Congress 9780199386789 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper To Emily with love Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction xi 1. Doxography, Pseudo-Pauline Literature, and the Christian Heresy Catalogue 1 The Early Christian Heresy Catalogue 4 Greek Doxography and the Origins of the Heresy Catalogue 11 The Pseudepigraphic Pauline Epistle 21 The Creation of the Heterodidaskalos 27 The Organization of Opponents into Chains of Succession 35 A Call for “Guardians of the Inheritance” 43 Conclusion 47 2. Justin’s Advertisement of the Syntagma against All the Heresies 49 Justin and the Syntagma against All the Heresies 55 The Promotion of Literary Works in the Greco-Roman World 66 Advertising and Competition 72 The Audience of Justin’s 1Apology 77 Conclusion 85 3. The Fragmentary Remains of Rival Heresy Catalogues 87 Hegesippus’s List of the “Seven Heresies among the People” 89 Justin and the Jewish Heresies 94 “Hylic” and “Psychic” Heretics in the Tripartite Tractate 108 viii Contents Four Peculiar Features of the Syntagma 121 The Syntagma and the Testimony of Truth 126 4. Irenaeus, the “School Called Gnostic,” and the Valentinians 131 Part I: The Increasing Popularity of the Syntagma against All the Heresies 133 Part II: The Syntagma and the “School Called Gnostic” 146 Identifying the Gnostic School 153 The Similar Case of the Logikē Hairesis in the Medical Literature 159 The Question of Self-Definition 161 The Universal Church and the Gnostic School 162 The School of the Valentinians? 166 Conclusion 170 Conclusion 173 Select Bibliography 177 Index 193 Acknowledgments i could not have completed this book without the host of mentors, col- leagues, friends, and family members who guided and supported me along the way. I would like to thank Elaine Pagels for providing me with invaluable assistance at each stage of the writing process and for challeng- ing me to produce scholarship that is creative, compelling, and clearly ar- ticulated. I would also like to thank AnneMarie Luijendijk for her advice and encouragement, and Martha Himmelfarb for offering detailed com- ments on drafts of chapters, and Naphtali Meshel, Peter Schäfer, Moulie Vidas, and Christian Wildberg for helping me to shape many of the ideas in this book. I must also acknowledge the generosity of Dirk Obbink at Oxford University, who for the past five summers has given of his valuable time to help me cultivate my interest in ancient manuscripts. Additionally, I am grateful to those who mentored me while I was an MTS student at Harvard Divinity School and an undergraduate at Biola University. In par- ticular I would like to thank François Bovon, Eldon Epp, Karen King, Helmut Koester, and Laura Nasrallah at Harvard, and Clint Arnold, Mi- chelle Lee-Barnewall, Joseph Hellerman, and Ronald Pierce at Biola. My colleagues at Princeton have also played an important role in my intellectual development. I would like to acknowledge Lance Jenott and Alex Kocar for their friendship and keen interest in my work. Our many conversations have sharpened and strengthened the arguments in this book. I am grateful as well for the support of those who participated in the Religions of Mediterranean Antiquity workshop, namely, Mika Ahuvia, A. J. Berkovitz, Sarit Kattan-Gribetz, David Grossberg, and David Jorgensen, all of whom commented extensively on drafts of chapters. I would also like to thank Chris Hoklotubbe and Matt Ketchum for their feedback on chap- ters 1 and 2. I offer a special thanks to the indispensable administrators of the Religion Department at Princeton University: Lorraine Fuhrmann, Pat Bogdziewicz, Kerry Smith, Mary Kay Bodnar, and Jeff Guest.