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a p p e n di x : r e a di ng p or p h y ry on t h e g nos t ic h e r e t ic s a n d t h e i r a p o c a ly p se s Γεγόνασι δὲ κατ’ αὐτὸν τῶν Χριστιανῶν πολλοὶ μὲν καὶ ἄλλοι, αἱρετικοὶ δὲ ἐκ τῆς παλαιᾶς φιλοσοφίας ἀνηγμένοι οἱ περὶ Ἀδέλφιον καὶ Ἀκυλῖνον . . . ἀποκαλύψεις τε προφέροντες Ζωροάστρου καὶ Ζωστριανοῦ καὶ Νικοθέου καὶ Ἀλλογενοῦς καὶ Μέσσου. There were in his (Plotinus’s) time many others, Christians, in particular heretics who had set out from the ancient philosophy, men belonging to the schools of Adelphius and Aculinus . . . who produced revelations of Zoroaster and Zostrianos and Nicotheus and Allogenes and Messos. The opening sentence of Vita Plotini chapter 16 contains a number of philological difficulties. How one chooses to approach them deeply affects consideration of the identity of the Gnostics in Plotinus’s circle and their controversial apocalypses. The language of the crucial first clause is tricky. First, there is the question of how to translate αἱρετικοί, here rendered “heretics.” Considering the common, non-pejorative use of the term in Greek philosophy,1 most translators prefer to render it with “sectarians” or “school” and so on.2 Yet Porphyry was an active opponent of Christianity, familiar both with biblical texts and contemporary philosophical debate about them. It is probable that he was familiar with the pejorative Christian sense of αἱρετικοί, “not orthodox,” that is, “heretics,” and, like Julian the Apostate, chose to use it when talking about certain Christian groups.3 The choice between these two options is a false one. Like Plotinus, Porphyry clearly regarded these Christians as wayward Platonists intent on founding their own school, but he was also surely capable of recognizing that they were different from the proto-orthodox and nastily derogating them as such.4 appendix 162 More difficult is the construction πολλοὶ μὲν καὶ ἄλλοι αἱρετικοὶ δὲ . . . : is ἄλλοι apposite to αἱρετικοί, marked by δέ and opposed to the πολλοί, marked by μέν? In this case, the passage would read “there were many Christians, and then there were others, heretics. The heretics ” would belong to a group of “others,” who are opposed to the “many Christians,” and thus were non-Christian adherents to pagan gnosis.5 I prefer the reading by which ἄλλοι is apposite to πολλοί by καί, minimizing the contrast between the subjects marked by μέν and δέ, in which case the text means “there were many others, Christians , in particular heretics.”6 Thus, the heretics (δέ) belong to a larger group of “other Christians” (μέν).7 Next, does ἀνηγμένοι οἱ περὶ Ἀδέλφιον καὶ Ἀκυλῖνον refer to Christian heretics specified as individuals who belonged to the school of Adelphius and Aculinus who simply rejected “the ancient philosophy ”?8 Or did they instead start out from the Greeks, presumably ending somewhere else, meriting Plotinus’s ire? As Howard Jackson argues, ἀνάγεσθαι does not simply mean “abandon” (pace Armstrong) as much as “set out on a voyage.”9 The latter option is thus to be preferred: Porphyry specifies that the heretics were Platonists who had gone astray. Finally, in English translation it is unclear whether “revelations of Zoroaster and Zostrianos” signals a single work of revelations ascribed to them both or two separate apocalypses. Indeed, the former could be indicated by the evidence from NHC VIII,1, whose scribal colophon (a cryptogram) reads, following the title Zostrianos, “words of truth of Zostrianos, god of truth; words of Zoroaster.” However, the καί between the two names in Porphyry does signal not just two individuals but also two apocalypses: an Apocalypse of Zoroaster, refuted by Porphyry, and The Apocalypse of Zostrianos, refuted by Amelius, as Porphyry says. The colophon in NHC VIII,1 appears to be not a title, but the embellishment of a scribe familiar with Zostrianos’s association with the figure of Zoroaster to a work entitled Zostrianos. The relationship of the Allogenes mentioned by Porphyry to a hypothetical Apocalypse of Messos is ambiguous. Henri-Charles Puech notes that the titles mentioned by Porphyry are separated by a καί, probably indicating different books (i.e., an Apocalypse of Allogenes and Apocalypse of Messos).10 The titular subscript concluding NHC XI,3 (“Allogenes”) probably indicates a single, independent work familiar with the figure of Messos, to whom another apocalypse was ascribed, although it is possible that Porphyry was confused, and sundered in his reading a single treatise in two.11 appendix 163 Altogether, then, Porphyry says the opponents were Christian heretics who had trained as Platonists. Among the writings they brought to the seminar were at least four apocalypses, assigned individually to Zoroaster, Zostrianos, Allogenes, and Nicotheus, and perhaps another to Messos. This page intentionally left blank ...

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