Journal of Early Christian Studies

Early Christian heresiology is shot through with methodological difficulties. Reading ancient authors write about their enemies is rarely straightforward, especially when the former claim that the latter made use of demons as assistants (Irenaeus, Adv. haer. 1.13.3). Where is the line between caricature and a more or less "honest" description of another's ideas? Also, what kinds of relationships might we imagine between those whose texts have endured (Justin, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Clement, etc.) and their christologically invested rivals whose texts are often only preserved as quotations in these aforementioned survivors? M. David Litwa's book takes us to the heart of these methodological challenges and helps us understand the intellectual interests and theological variance between three Christian teachers from the early second century affiliated with Rome and Alexandria.

Carpocrates, Marcellina, and Epiphanes is a commentarial monograph that investigates how the teachings of these three figures are "remembered" in the writings of Clement of Alexandria, Irenaeus, and, to a lesser degree, Epiphanius. The first chapter is a commentary on Epiphanes's On Justice and a highlight of the book. In his Stromata, Clement says that Epiphanes was the son of Carpocrates, that he died at the age of seventeen, and that he is honored as a god in the city of Same in Cephallenia (Strom. 3.2.5.2–3). Litwa's treatment of the veneration of the deceased teenager is illuminating, situating the birthday sacrifice and hymnic recital to Epiphanes alongside the Athenian birthday hymns for Plato attested by Proclus in the fifth century c.e., as well as the new moon and yearly sacrifices to Ptolemy V as a manifestation of the divine. Litwa's engagement with the four quotations from On Justice reveals the complexity of Epiphanes's thinking on κοινωνία: working with gospel traditions about indiscriminate divine beneficence, sprinkling the text with Homeric and Hesiodic ideas about the Sun and personified Justice, adopting Pauline verbiage, and employing Stoic arguments from nature.

The second chapter delves into the traditions surrounding the father, Carpocrates, and Marcellina, a Carpocratian sympathizer who migrated to Rome in the mid-160s c.e. The reports twist and turn through multiple sources. As Litwa lays things out, an updated version of (pseudo-)Justin Martyr's Syntagma was subsequently used by Irenaeus, who further shaped the report, while other, later reports of the two teachers appear in pseudo-Tertullian's Against All Heresies, Epiphanius's Panarion, and Philastrius's Diverse Heresies and seem to derive from an early third-century report known as the Syntagma of Thirty-Two Heresies, which itself borrowed material from Irenaeus. Litwa proceeds to comment on these reports by including a four-columned text of the various sources, with priority given to the content in Irenaeus. Litwa should be commended for untangling the reports and pressing them for viable content regarding Carpocratian [End Page 137] self-understanding. One instance of Litwa's dividing plumb line: Carpocratians are charged with the idea of angelic creation, but this accusation stems from Irenaeus's conviction that they are "Gnostics".

The final core chapter maps the complex origins of the so-called Secret Gospel of Mark. In 1958, Morton Smith claimed to have discovered a quotation from "Secret Mark" in a manuscript of Clement of Alexandria that has subsequently been lost save for a few photographs published by Charles Hedrick in the late 1990s. In the fragment, known as the Epistle of Theodore, Clement claims that Mark interpolated the first version of his Gospel after the death of Peter according to a set of memoranda featuring additional activities and teachings of Jesus. The epistle claims that Carpocrates coaxed a presbyter from Alexandria to bring him a copy of this μυστικοῦ εὐαγγελίου, which he interpreted wrongly, thereby producing the δόγμα of the Carpocratians. The epistle recommends lying about the connection to Mark and offers scriptural texts in support of the noble lie (2.12–19). For Litwa, this epistle is a creative expansion of the passages of Clement preserved in Eusebius about gospel-writing, together with the use of all four canonical Gospels. Litwa presses further and argues that Smith himself produced the creative expansion, departing from those who think that the quality of the paleography is indicative of a scribal hand trained many centuries ago.

Litwa is to be commended for this genre-defying book, one that will certainly facilitate further engagement with ancient Christian social and intellectual history. The commentary notes showcase Litwa's learning and balanced engagement with Greek philosophy, Roman cultural expectations, Philo's Alexandrian interpretive parallels, and early Christian texts. As a result, we can see more clearly how Epiphanes's and Carpocrates's thought developed through an intense exchange of ideas within a complex cultural and intellectual environment in the second century. Litwa's skill as a critic of textual traditions is also on display, and we more readily observe how Carpocratian reports were variously traded between later writers, updated and tweaked according to heresiological needs.

In the substantial conclusion, Litwa reviews each of the three teachers, and yet this structure places a strain on the reader, whose expectations for synthetic work are primed by the core chapters themselves. Deferring this rich analysis—identifying strands of Platonic-Pythagorean metaphysics and Cynic-Stoic ethics in Carpocrates for instance—results in an iterative and punctiliar sequence throughout the book. Further, while Litwa focuses on the position of these teachers within the history of Alexandria, this geographic line of analysis underwhelms. Indeed, Litwa helpfully situates these teachers within gentile circles in Alexandria, in part because of the tragic amount of political violence directed at Jews in Alexandria throughout the first and early second centuries coupled with the rise of gentile Christian teachers and philosophers such as Basilides and Valentinus during the reign of Hadrian. The present reviewer wonders, however, whether exploring methodological parallels with surrounding Alexandrians might yield more illuminating results vis-à-vis the constructed boundary between heretic and orthodox. The common use of Plato, for example, between Epiphanes, Clement, Carpocrates, and Origen would significantly complicate this boundary, as would the Carpocratian criticisms of Jesus's Jewishness (Adv. haer. 1.25.1; Pan. 27.2.7), [End Page 138] which parallel comments in Origen (Cels. 2.2) and others. Despite pushing against some of the book's frame, the project is a strong resource for ongoing and necessary work in the study of early Christian heresiology, and for that Litwa's efforts are a resounding success.