Valentino Gnostico e Platonico: Il Valentinianesimo della “Grande Notizia” di Ireneo di Lione: Fra esegesi gnostica e filosofia medioplatonica by Giuliano Chiapparini (review)

Giuliano Chiapparini’s monograph will prove to be a controversial but indispensable contribution to the study of Valentinianism and Irenaeus’s Against Heresies. The author argues that the so-called Grand Notice of Against Heresies I: 1–8 preserves the earliest and most accurate account of the doctrines of the founder, Valentinus, albeit transmitted by disciples such as Ptolemy. He presents a forceful case against recent views (notably those of Christoph Markschies and Einar Thomassen) that tend to see the preaching of Valentinus (in the 140s), and the doctrines even of Ptolemy (from around 160), as being less heresy than orthodoxy framed philosophically. The radical features of Valentinianism exemplified by the Grand Notice—particularly the complex mythology surrounding the Pleroma and Sophia—are thought (not just by recent scholars, but even by Tertullian) to have been invented by Ptolemy’s followers, in the 170s and 180s. Chiapparini argues that this picture is completely wrong. The Grand Notice was composed by Irenaeus during his Roman years (153–73, prob. 160–65), when he would have had a chance to interact personally with many of the key figures, perhaps Valentinus himself. The Grand Notice is a multilayered and reliable report.

To make his case, Chiapparini aligns the Greek (preserved by Epiphanius) of the Notice against the ancient Latin translation and the parallels in Tertullian’s Against the Valentinians. He translates all the relevant sections; provides a detailed philological analysis of key phrases; and offers numerous insights into the manuscript tradition, primarily Greek and Latin. In the course of this exercise, he shows conclusively that Epiphanius replicates faithfully Irenaeus’s otherwise lost Greek text.

Chiapparini reconstructs the sources used for the Notice. He identifies two principal written sources, one of which overlaps with St. Clement of Alexandria’s Excerpta ex Theodoto; an exegetical treatise on the Gospel of John written by Ptolemy; and various oral reports. He argues that when these sources are studied in their own right; and compared individually with testimonies of the teachings of Valentinus and Ptolemy, one may reconstruct their doctrines. His own reconstruction comes in the final section of the book—a series of analyses on Valentinian teaching on the Pleroma, the cosmos, and salvation. He claims that the earliest Valentinian theology cannot be associated with “Gnosticism,” be it understood in late-antique or modern terms. The Grand Notice depicts the Creator-Demiurge as a positive force, the cosmos as an imperfect but genuine reproduction of higher realities, and knowledge as intertwined with being—themes consistent with the revised earlier dating of the material.

Critics will find easy marks in Chiapparini’s book. He disregards the Nag Hammadi material associated with Valentinianism, treating it as late and derivative (A Valentinian Exposition [NH XI: 2] is conspicuously absent from the commentary). In addition, he contrasts Irenaeus’s dispassionate Grand Notice with subsequent sarcastic rejoinders and argues that they represent two phases of writing, reflecting the emergence of a sharp distinction between heresy and orthodoxy in the late-second century. But this approach would require one also to date the dispassionate summary of the teachings of Marcus Magus (I: 14.1–15.3) to c. 160 and the saucy rebuttal (I: 15.4–6) to the 170s—a rather absurd scenario, and a signal that Irenaeus (like the other early heresiologists) knew how to move between précis and lampoon.

Even the sharpest critic will acknowledge that Chiapparini has opened a vital new front in the study of second-century orthodoxy and heresy. His study cannot be ignored. Where his conclusions are rejected, his philological method will need to be grappled with, if not adopted. His analysis deserves to be applied to the entirety of Against Heresies 1, most of which...