Il divino senza veli: La dottrina gnostica della Lettera valentiniana’ di Epifanio, Panarion 31 5-6. Testo, traudzione e commento storico-religioso by Giuliano Chiapparini (review)

Scholars are often (begrudgingly) grateful to Epiphanius for his preservation of otherwise lost texts in his massive heresiology, the Panarion. In particular, those interested in “Gnosticism” have benefitted from Epiphanius’s documentary practices, especially for Ptolemy’s Letter to Flora and portions of Irenaeus’s Against Heresies in their original Greek. While there is a growing body of recent scholarship interested in studying Epiphanius in his own right, there is also a long-standing scholarly practice of mining his writings for information on those whom he condemned as heretics. The learned study under review here fits into the latter category and will be of particular interest to scholars of Valentinian Christianity.

Ensconced in the entry dedicated to the Valentinians in Panarion 31 is an anonymous letter, identified by Chiapparini as the Lettera dottrinale valentiniana (LDV). Scholars have marginalized or even dismissed the significance of this letter because the text is perceived to be in such a mangled state—the result of multiple recensions—that it lacks coherence and is thus not useful for understanding early Valentinian theology. In addition, the contents of the letter seem to exhibit significant variance with other known writings in the tradition, in particular a strong and consistent sexual component, and so scholars have pushed the date of the text closer to the end of the second century. However, through careful philological and theological analysis, Chiapparini offers a completely different dating, context, and interpretation of the text. He suggests that much of the problem lies with the modern textual tradition of the Panarion, in particular the edition of Karl Holl, first published in 1915. Scholars have long been aware of Holl’s penchant for conjecture and unnecessary emendations to the text; and in the case of the LDV, Chiapparini argues that Holl’s choices have had a problematic impact on the scholarly reception of the letter, evident most poignantly in faulty translations of the text into modern languages. And so Chiapparini returned to the manuscript tradition, revised the text, and has recovered what appears to be a more coherent theological exposition that exhibits rhetorical sophistication, intertextual engagement with the New Testament, and evidence for a lively intra-Valentinian cosmological debate. Furthermore, he has untangled the bewildering list of aeons found at the end of the letter, by suggesting that the names were originally in an early Syriac that became distorted in transliteration. This in turn suggests that the provenance of the letter might be better situated in the east, and because of its esoteric contents intended for an audience deeply familiar with the teachings of Valentinus

Chiapparini argues that the LDV belongs to the period 160-165, subsequent to the expulsion of the Valentinians from Rome, but before they polemically separated themselves from their accusers and drew much sharper distinctions between the “psychic” and the “spiritual.” Chiapparini carefully examines and compares the writings of both the accusers (Irenaeus, Tertullian, Hippolytus, Epiphanius) and the accused, and in the LDV finds a more “optimistic” outlook, one that accommodates a wider swath of people and their potential access to salvific knowledge. This same sense of optimism is reflected in the letter’s revelatory cosmology and view of theodicy. According to Chiapparini’s analysis, absent from the LDV are the sexual undertones identified by earlier scholars, any roles assigned to the Demiurge and the devil, and any anthropological or ethical concerns. It is at its heart, as Chiapparini proposes, a “mini-apocalypse” in the form of a letter, intended for an internal audience.

It remains for other scholars of Valentinian Christianity to accept Chiapparini’s date, context, and interpretation of the LDV, but they can rest assured that his arguments are built on careful philological work and insightful theological...