Valentinus Gnosticus? Untersuchungen zur valentinianischen Gnosis mit einem Kommentar zu den Fragmenten Valentins.

• Author: Desjardins, Michel

By Christoph Markschies. Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament, 65. Tubingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1992. Pp. xii + 516. DM 178.

This book, a slightly revised 1991 Tubingen dissertation directed by L. Abramowski and M. Hengel, is presented as the first part of the author's extended study of Valentinianism. In this opening volume, Markschies directs his attention to the founder himself, accepting as primary sources only the fragments of Valentinus' own writings which have survived in patristic accounts. Valentinus Gnosticus? provides a detailed examination of those fragments (pp. 1-290) before assessing further information about Valentinus' life and teachings (pp. 293-387). Its appearance catapults Markschies to the front rank of Valentinian scholars.

Markschies takes the reader through each fragment in turn: the Greek text and translation, its context in the patristic narrative, a phrase-by-phrase examination, then a summary. Of note is the removal from the primary source base of a minor fragment long considered authentic (Fr. 9 attributed to Pseudo-Anthimus) and the addition of another (from Hippolytus' Refulatio, X.13,4): (twelve unconvertible words in Greek characters) ("He does not wish the flesh to be saved, calling [it] a 'leathery garment' and a 'spoiled person'"). Markschies downplays the relevance of later Valentinian sources as interpretive aids, emphasizing instead the parallels with Platonic and Biblical sources (especially Matthew and Paul), thereby encouraging an image of "Valentinus als platonisierender Bibelausleger" (p, 182). Through this lens, Valentinus appears as a second-century Christian theologian with far greater affinities to Philo and Clement of Alexandria than to gnostics such as Ptolemy, Heracleon, and Theodotus. "Der Valentin der Fragmente war kein Valentinianer, dies solite m.E. nicht mehr ignoriert werden" (p. 406).

Markschies believes that the "shadow figure" who emerges from these fragments is likely as close as one will get to the historical Valentinus. Scholars usually attempt to harmonize the differences between the fragments and the heresiological accounts of Valentinianism, suggesting, e.g., that the fragments represent Valentinus' "pregnostic phase" or his "exoteric teaching." Markschies will have none of this. He argues that Valentinus' followers were the ones who gnosticized or "Valentinianized" his teachings. This position is directly opposed to B. Layton's "fundamental...