The Armenian Marcionites and the Diatessaron

Author(s): Robert P. Casey

Source: Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. 57, No. 2 (Jun., 1938), pp. 185-194
Published by: The Society of Biblical Literature
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THE ARMENIAN MARCIONITES AND THE
DIATESSARON
ROBERT P. CASEY
BROWN UNIVERSITY

of the best known pieces of early Armenian theological

ONE
literature is the and controversial treatise of
apologetic
Eznik of Kolb, bishop of Bagrewand. The work was composed
445-448 A.D. and survives in a single manuscript of the late
thirteenth century and has passed through successive editions
since the first printing at Smyrna in 1762. Its original title is
unknown and its printed divisions rest on critical conjecture,
but its general place and purpose are clear enough and an ingen-
ious analysis of both has recently been made by Professor Louis
Maribs of the Institut Catholique in Paris. It contains an expo-
sition of Christian theology with special reference to the problem
of theodicy and a detailed refutation of the current theological
errors with which the author was especially familiar.'
The fourth book of this work deals with Marcionite theology
and begins with a brief exposition of the system to the refuta-
tion of which the bulk of the discussion is devoted. Scholars
have for the most part been interested in this section as a pos-
sible clue to Marcion's own thought, though it has been generally
recognized that the system as a whole represents a later sectarian
development. The main points of difference between it and the
evidence of Tertullian and others who knew Marcion's writings
at first hand have been adequately stated by Harnack in his
monograph of Marcion.2 There remain, however, some critical
'L. Maries, Le De Deo d'Eznik de Kolb connu sous le nom de "Contreles
Sectes,"Paris, 1924.
2 A.
Harnack, Marcion:Das EvangelicumvomfremdenGott(Texteund Unter-
suchungen,45), 2te Aufl., Leipzig, 1924, *372.
185

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186 JOURNAL OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE

problems in Eznik's brief exposition which are worth further

consideration and it is proposed here to examine some of these
and to direct attention to the system as it stands rather than
to its possible implications for earlier stages of Marcionite
theology.
Eznik's account contains a description of the powers which
control the universe and the way in which the world and man
were created and the problem of salvation and its solution. The
world is made up of the earth or matter, personified as Hyle,
and three heavens. In the topmost of these heavens lives the
Stranger, the deity who ultimately saved mankind. In the second
lives the God of the Law; and in the third the "hosts" of the
God of the Law. Hyle inhabits the earth and is called the Power
of the Earth.
The world was made by the God of the Law in union with
Hyle, but after it was finished the god returned with his hosts
to rule the heaven, leaving Hyle with her sons to govern the
earth. After his return, however, he observed that the world
he had created was beautiful and it occurred to him to create
for himself a man. So he went back to Hyle and said, "Give me
of thine earth and of myself I am giving soul, and let us make
man in our likeness." Hyle gave him earth and he breathed
soul into it and Adam emerged a living and breathing creature
and received his name from the fact that he was fashioned from
earth. The creator then made Adam's wife and placed them in
the Garden and they received his commands as children.
Here difficulties arise, and the first act of the drama of redemp-
tion opens. Having made Adam, the creator perceived that he
was a noble and worthy creature and considered how he might
steal him from Hyle and attach him to himself. He therefore
took him on one side and said, "I am God and there is no other
and thou shalt have no other god but me. But if thou shouldst
have any other god but me, know that thou shalt die." At the
mention of death Adam was terror-stricken and began gradually
to separate his soul from matter, i. e. to withdraw from Hyle's
influence.
Hyle soon observed that Adam no longer heeded her custom-
ary advances and realized that she had been betrayed by the

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CASEY: MARCIONITES AND THE DIATESSARON 187

creator. So she said to herself, "The water of the spring has been
troubled at the source. What is this? Adam has not yet repro-
duced and he has been stolen from me in the name of his deity.
Since then he has ceased to keep pact with me, I shall make
many gods and fill up the world with them so that he may inquire
which is God and not find out." She then made many idols
which she called gods and the name of the Lord of Creation was
lost in the number and his worship neglected in favour of Hyle's
creations. This angered the god so much that he seized each
soul as it departed from the body and cast it into the pit of hell.
Adam was consigned to Gehenna for eating of the Tree of Knowl-
edge and his descendants similarly for 2900 years.3
At this point a new act begins. The Stranger, the good god
of the topmost heaven, looked down and observed the torments
to which men were subjected and resolved to help them. He
therefore resorted to a strategy to beat the God of the Law at
his own game and sent his son to earth in the likeness of a servant
(Phil 2 7) and in the form of a man. He did all manner of good
works, healing the sick and raising the dead, and in this way
roused the envy of the Lord of Creation who crucified him.
After death he passed into hell and rescued those who were
there, because hell was not accustomed to receive the living,
and the death of the good god's son was simulated, not real, so
that he could break down hell's gates and lead the imprisoned
souls to his father in the third heaven. This angered the Lord
of Creation greatly and he rent his garment and tore the veil
of his temple and darkened his sun and clothed his world in
darkness and sat in mourning.
Then Jesus descended again, but this time in the form of his
divinity, and accused the Lord of Creation of his death. The
god was dismayed as he had not known until then that any other
god existed, but Jesus said to him, "I have a case against thee
and no one shall judge between us but thine own law which thou
has written ... Didst thou not write in thy Law that he who

3 "Diese Vertauschung von 3000 JJ. mit 2900 kann doch nur aus der Tendenz
entsprungen sein, die fiberlieferten 3000 JJ. auf das Erscheinen Marcions zu
deuten mit und nach dessen Auftreten das Weltende kommt." Harnack,
*23 n. 1.

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188 JOURNAL OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE

kills shall die and they shall shed the blood of him who sheds
blood? ... Now thou hast delivered thyself into my hands so
that I may kill thee and shed thy blood as thou didst kill me and
shed my blood. For I am more righteous than thou and I have
done great kindness to thy creation." And he recounted all the
kindnesses he had done. At this the Lord of Creation was con-
founded, and, pleading ignorance of the Stranger's existence,
offered as amends to give Jesus all those who would believe in
him to go wherever he wished. Jesus then departed and appointed
Paul to proclaim the news that "we are bought with a price
(1 Cor 6 20) and that all who believe in Jesus have been sold by
the Righteous to the Good God."
However diverse the influences may have been which affected
Eznik's polemical discussion of Marcionite theology and practice,
there can be no-doubt this initial statement was derived in one
piece from an anterior source. Eznik himself marks it off by the
observation at the close of his exposition that all Marcionites
were not familiar with this system, and though all would claim
that the Stranger had bought them with a price, some did not
know how or why. Furthermore the manner of quotation and
the character of the quoted bit is unambiguous. Like Hippolytus
and Clement of Alexandria, Eznik attributes the reported theol-
ogy to the founder of the sect, but quotes it indiscriminately by
"he says" or "they say." The sense and sequence of construc-
tion is also not perfectly smooth or consistent so that the gram-
mar has sometimes to be understood from the general sense
rather than the particular context. Finally there can be no doubt
that the charge to Jesus by the Good God is quotation and not
summary, for there is a sudden change to direct discourse and
the god says, "Thou shalt cure their lepers and quicken their
dead and open the eyes of their blind," etc. From these indica-
tions it may be assumed that the underlying document was one
of those brief but systematic statements of sectarian theology
which were popular among Gnostic theologians of the second and
third generations and of which there are several examples in
Hippolytus V and Irenaeus I.
There can also be little doubt that the language of this source
was Syriac. In his introductory essay to Mitchell's edition of

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CASEY: MARCIONITES AND THE DIATESSARON 189

St. Ephraem's Refutations Burkitt remarked: "It is very likely

that Eznik's account is not so much an original description of
the Armenian Marcionites known to him as a translation from
some early Syriac writer."4 An examination of the Armenian
text completely confirms this conjecture. Apart from several
minute but suggestive points of style two facts are decisive.
(a) In the story of creation Adam's name is explained from
the circumstance that he was created from the earth. The
Armenian reads, "For this reason Adam received his name, be-
cause he was made from earth" (i kawoyn), which brings out the
point no better than the English. But the Syriac doubtless read
that Adam received his name because he was created men
adamtha.
(b) We know from Burkitt's study of St. Ephraem "that the
Syriac-speaking Marcionites used a different transliteration of
the name 'Jesus' from the orthodox. The ordinary Syriac for
'Jesus' is i?o (pronounced 'Isho' by Nestorians but 'Yeshu' by
Jacobites) which is simply the Syriac form of the Old Testament
name Joshua. This form oz. was used not only by the orthodox
but also by the Manichees. It was therefore a surprise to find
that Ephraim in arguing against Marcionites, and certainly in
part quoting from their books or sayings, uses the form oz., a
direct transcription of the Greek 'IJroD^(or 'Iroo0s)." A similar
argument can be applied mutatis mutandis to the text of Eznik
which in this section presents, instead of the usual ObunLu, the
singular form bhunL, a transliteration of Syriac-Marcionite

The rationale of Eznik's Marcionite myth is transparent. The

notion that the universe was divided into three heavens and the
earth was not a characteristic of any sect but was one of a num-
ber open to adoption by various theologies. Its choice by the
Marcionites was doubtless determined by 2 Cor 12 2. The story
of creation is, as Eznik himself notes, an adaptation of the
cosmology of Genesis, which means in practice an alteration of
Gen 1-2 to fit a somewhat different theory of the origin of

4 C. W. Mitchell, S. Ephraim's Prose Refutations3 (Text and Translation

Society), cxviii.

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190 JOURNAL OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE

things. The figure of the Stranger is familiar from the earlier

sources. Marcion called him 6 &YaObsand 6 evos, and these
characteristic designations recur in both Ephraim and Eznik.
The Just God or Lord of Creation and God of the Law, as he
was called, is likewisean integralpart of Marcion'sown theology.
The question of Hyle is more complicated. Marcion appar-
ently regardedmatter as an impersonalsubstance, evil by nature
but devoid of personal qualities, and his disciples in general fol-
lowed his opinion, so that when an evil personality was intro-
duced, it was either by importing the devil with the scheme (as
with Megethius, Adamantius Dial. I, 3) or by regarding the
creator as evil. Among the Marcionites known to Eznik and
Ephraim, however, Hyle was a mythological figure, based to be
sure on an abstraction, but possessed of individual character
and temperament. She was called the "Powerof the Earth" for
she reigned over it and the world was made through union with
her. She supplied the earth from which Adam was made and
operated through his fleshly nature, tempting him to lust, a
temptation which he suppressedat the creator'sthreat of death.
Enraged at being cheated of Adam she invented idols and orig-
inated polytheism. After this the struggle with the creator for
the control of human destiny passed from her hands to the
Stranger's,but in the early stages of the myth she is the Lord of
Creation's principal rival. Like the Valentinian Sophia, how-
ever, her character is ambiguous, for she is not fundamentally
a creatureof the imaginationbut of philosophyand is not really
mythology at all but symbolism. This confusion of genres ap-
pears clearly in Eznik's meaningless observation that she was
associated with the creator in essence and in the point of her
story. Her conflict with the God of the Law represents man's
struggle with the flesh and perpetuates Marcion's distaste for
sexuality and prejudice against it. In religion preoccupation
with matter leads to gross idolatry; hence Hyle is the inventor
of images and of the notion that they are gods.

s F. C. Burkitt, "Notes on Valentinian terms in Irenaeus and Tertullian,"

JTS, XXV, 64; R. P. Casey, "Two Notes On Valentinian Theology," HTR'
XXIII, 282, 287.

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CASEY: MARCIONITES AND THE DIATESSARON 191

The account of redemptionis differentboth in plot and moti-

vation from earlierMarcionitesystems. For Marcionthe theory
of the two gods was an answer to the problem of theodicy and
he includedamong the evils occasionedby the creator'sstupidity
and "righteousness" a large number of the difficulties and
injustices of human life. The theory in Eznik's source is much
simpler and much inferior. The creator's wrath is caused by
idolatry with its covert return to Hyle's control and is expressed
by his indiscriminatingedict of damnation. The moral and
speculative issues which so deeply concernedMarciondrop from
view and are replacedby a crude and pointless invention.
Jesus' appearanceon earth was "in the likeness of a servant
and in the form of a man" (cf. Phil 2 7). Jesus' death was a real
though not an ordinary death and did not interfere with the
continuance of his life. His father, the Good God, said to him
when sending him to earth, "At thy death thou shalt descend
into hell, and shalt releasethem thence, for hell is not accustomed
to receive the living in its midst; but after the crucifixion'thou
shalt be like the dead'." In his accusation of the creator Jesus
also remarks,"Now hast thou given thyself into my hands that
I may kill thee and shed blood as thou didst kill me and didst
spill my blood."
The most curiousfeatureof Eznik'saccountis the deviceby
which salvationis effected. In the Apologistsof the second
centurysalvationconsistedprimarilyin the victory of Christ
over the demonswho troubledmankind,and from Origenon
the notion was popularamongGreektheologiansthat Christ
had deceivedthe devil into supposinghim a humanbeingand
thus stole awaythe soulshe had [Link] view appears
to have beentakenoverby the SyrianMarcionites and adapted
to their scheme. Like Marcionthese hereticsappearto have
held no peculiarviews about the devil but to have assimilated
a popularchapterof demonologyfromtheirorthodoxenviron-
ment. The dialoguebetweenJesusand the God of the Law in
which the superiorrighteousnessof Jesus is emphasizedand the
Torah evoked as the judge in the case is novel and ingenious.
The notion that all who believe in Christ were releasedby the
creator and taken to the realm of the Good God is a constant

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192 JOURNAL OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE

feature in Marcionite thought, as well as Paul's predominant

role in proclaiming the good news. "We are bought with a price,"
seems to have been the most common expression of this hope
among Eznik's sectaries, known to many who were ignorant of
the theological refinements of particular systems.
One point is worth raising in connection with the Scriptural
authority recognized by the Syrian Marcionites. Burkitt in his
study of Ephraim's quotations remarked that there is no trace
of Marcion's peculiar edition of Luke in his writings and that
his quotations were most probably derived from the Diatessaron.6
This seems to have been the case among the heretics themselves.
In Eznik's account when the creator becomes angry at man's
defection to idolatry he tears his garment and the veil of his
temple, darkens his sun and cloaks his world with darkness.
All these gestures contain patent references to the Passion nar-
rative. In Luke, however, the high priest does not tear his gar-
ment nor is the Temple veil rent, but the eclipse of the sun is
peculiar to Luke.7 All these features, however, occur in the
Diatessaron. The quotations must belong to Eznik's source for
their exegesis is quite peculiar to its system. We must, therefore,
reckon in the East with a form of Marcionism which found the
popularity of Tatian's harmony too great to be set aside. That
this was not true of all Syrian Marcionites appears from the
Syriac spurium on the Parables extant in an Armenian version
and attributed to St. Ephraim.8 It may be that a Marcionite
version of the Diatessaron was issued to meet the need of Eznik's
group,9 but it is at least certain that the Diatessaron and not
Marcion's much mutilated version of Luke was the starting
point.
6
S. Ephraim's Prose Refutations 2, cxviii.
7 Eznik's text xawarecaw zaregakn implies the reading rKoTlerO?7
6XLos,
in agreement with the Diatessaron and with Marcion's Luke. Harnack, *236.
8 J. Schtifers, Eine altsyrische antimarkionitische Erkldrung von Parabeln
des Herrn, (Neutestamentliche Abhandlungen, 6, 1-2), Miinster 1917, 208.
9 Strong arguments for the existence of an Armenian version of the Diates-
saron have been advanced by F. C. Conybeare, "An Armenian Diatessaron?"
JTS, XXV, 232, and P. Esabalean, Tatian's Diatessaron and the First Trans-
lation of the Armenian Gospels (The National Library, 142) (In modern Armen-
ian), Vienna, 1937; cf. JBL, LVII, 95.

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CASEY: MARCIONITES AND THE DIATESSARON 193

The later portions of Book IV are devoted mainly to a refuta-

tion of Marcionite theology, but occasionally points of teaching
or practice are raised which do not appear in the earlier section.
It is by no means certain that these notices were derived from
the Syriac source underlying IV.1, but some agree sufficiently
with it or with Ephraim to make it probable that they apply to
the same sect. Eznik knew of Marcion's edited gospel,Io but this
is not proof that the Marcionites of IV.1 employed it. The
penitential discipline of the Marcionites he found particularly
objectionable," as well as their vegetarianism.12 They proposed,
"From the time of our baptism we abstain from flesh-food and
from marriage,"'3 but like other Christians they found theory
simpler than practice and solved the problem of sin after baptism
by penance. Eznik, however, finds this inconsistent with their
theological premises, for the Good God who saves them will in
no case punish, so why engage in useless attempts to appease a
wrath which ex hypothesi could not arise in the divine breast?'4
Abstinence from meat, he says, is absurd among people who
continue to drink wine,'s and the motive for sexual ascetisicm is
wrong. Among Catholics it applies only to religious, and arises
not from any depreciation of marriage as such.'6 But the Mar-
cionites object to marriage and reproduction in principle. Some
of this detailed information may have come from Eznik's source
in IV.1, but it is unlikely that all of it did. It is more probable
that the scattered notes on Marcionite exegesis were derived
from it. This is especially true of the list of contrasted passages
from the Old and New Testaments in IV. 12, for the latter are
found with one exception in Matthew and the Diatessaron but
not in Luke.
The result of this investigation has been to discover in Eznik
IV clear evidence for the use of a Syriac Marcionite source
emanating from the circles with which St. Ephraim was ac-
quainted and agreeing in all essential points with their theology
and usage. Their myth is a modification of the Marcionite
lo 11
iv, 3. iv, 14.
12iv. 12. '3 iv. 14.
14 iv. 14. '15iv. 12.
'6 iv. 16.

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194 JOURNAL OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE

system of a kind characteristicof epigoni and sectariandevelop-

ment. The speculative freshness and sensitiveness of the early
phase of thought has been lost, and a cruder, simpler, more
pictorial view has replacedit. Like the earlier Marcionitesthey
appeared as practicing Christians with peculiar ascetic notions
and habits, but unlike them they followed the traditional Scrip-
tural authority of theirsurroundingsand retainedthe Diatessaron
as their gospel. It would seem natural that the group had gained
some ground in Armenia, since they are treated by Eznik as a
living issue, but if so the probabilitiesare that they, like many
Armenian Catholics of their time, employed Syriac as their
theologicallanguage.

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