From Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur, volume 6, part 3 (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1891), pages 111–120, translated from the German. The heading is Harnack’s: “Sieben neue Bruchstücke der Syllogismen des Apelles.”
[p. 111]
I dealt with Apelles, his writings and his doctrine sixteen years ago in my dissertation “De Apellis gnosi monarchica.”1) As far as I know, the source material I gathered there has not been added to by anyone, not even by Hilgenfeld, who wrote on Apelles in the Ztschr. f. wissensch. Theol. 1875, no. 1, and in his Ketzergeschichte, p. 531 ff. Nor was Meyboom (Marcion en de Marcionieten, 1888, p. 203 ff.) able to bring forward anything new. I am now in a position to communicate some new fragments of the “Syllogisms” of Apelles.
Our knowledge of the Syllogisms, this companion piece to Marcion’s “Antitheses,” is very slight. In what follows I gather together what has been known until now:
Pseudo-Tertullian: “Legem et prophetas repudiat . . . Habet praeterea suos libros, quos inscripsit Syllogismorum, in quibus probare vult, quod omnia quaecunque Moyses de deo scripserit vera non sint, sed falsa sint.” [English: “He rejects the law and the prophets . . . He has besides his own books, which he entitled ‘of Syllogisms,’ in which he wishes to prove that whatever Moses wrote about God is not true but false.”]
Hippol., Philosoph. VII, 38: Νόμον δὲ καὶ προφήτας δυσφημεῖ, ἀνθρώπινα καὶ ψευδῆ φάσκων εἶναι τὰ γεγραμμένα. [English: “He speaks ill of the law and the prophets, saying that what is written is human and false.”]
Hippol., Philosoph. X, 20: Οὕτως κατὰ τοῦ νόμου καὶ τῶν προφητῶν συντάγματα ἐποίησε, καταλύειν αὐτοὺς ἐπιχειρῶν ὡς ψευδῆ λελαληκότας καὶ θεὸν μὴ ἐγνωκότας. [English: “Thus he made treatises against the law and the prophets, attempting to overthrow them as men who had spoken falsehoods and had not known God.”]
Notes [p. 111]
1) In Patr. App. Opp. I, 2 (1878), p. 140, I pointed out that Epiphanius (Hippolytus) preserves the christological rule of faith of Apelles, which closed with the words ἀνέπτη εἰς οὐρανὸν ὅθεν καὶ ἧκεν [he flew up into heaven, from where he had also come]. This observation had escaped me in the monograph.
[p. 112]
Rhodon in Euseb., h. e. V, 13: Ἀπελλῆς ἔφη, τὰς μὲν προφητείας ἑαυτὰς ἐλέγχειν, διὰ τὸ μηδὲν ὅλως ἀληθὲς εἰρηκέναι· ἀσύμφωνοι γὰρ ὑπάρχουσι καὶ ψευδεῖς καὶ ἑαυταῖς ἀντικείμεναι . . . . Ἀπελλῆς μυρία κατὰ τοῦ Μωϋσέως ἠσέβησε νόμου, διὰ πλειόνων συγγραμμάτων τοὺς θείους βλασφημήσας λόγους εἰς ἔλεγχόν τε, ὥς γε δὴ ἐδόκει, καὶ ἀνατροπὴν αὐτῶν οὐ μικρὰν πεποιημένος σπουδήν. [English: “Apelles said that the prophecies refute themselves, because they have said nothing true at all; for they are inconsistent and false and contradict themselves . . . . Apelles committed countless impieties against the law of Moses, blaspheming the divine words in a great many writings, and making no small effort, as he at least thought, to refute and overthrow them.”]
What Tertullian took from the Syllogisms for his account of Apelles’ system can no longer be determined. But Ambrose and Origen bring us some fragments. Ambrose writes (de paradiso V, 28): “Plerique enim, quorum auctor Apelles, sicut habes in trigesimo et octavo tomo eius, has quaestiones proponunt: Quomodo lignum vitae plus operari videtur ad vitam quam insufflatio dei? Deinde si hominem non perfectum fecit deus, unusquisque autem per industriam propriam perfectionem sibi virtutis adsciscit: nonne videtur plus sibi homo acquirere, quam ei deus contulit? Tertium obiciunt: Et si homo non gustaverat mortem, utique quam non gustaverat, scire non poterat. Ergo si non gustaverat, nesciebat; si nesciebat, timere non poterat. Frustra igitur deus mortem pro terrore obiecit, quam homines non timebant.”
[English: “For most of them, whose author is Apelles, as you have it in his thirty-eighth tome, put forward these questions: How is it that the tree of life seems to do more for life than the breath of God? Next, if God did not make man perfect, but each man by his own diligence gains for himself the perfection of virtue, does not man seem to gain more for himself than God gave him? Third, they object: And if man had not tasted death, he certainly could not know what he had not tasted. So if he had not tasted it, he did not know it; if he did not know it, he could not fear it. In vain, then, did God hold out death as a terror, since men did not fear it.”]
Origen has preserved the following for us (in Genes. hom. II, 2, Lommatzsch VIII p. 134 sq.): “Sed his omnibus tanta arte compositis, obiciunt quidam quaestiones, et praecipue Apelles, qui fuit discipulus quidem Marcionis, sed alterius haereseos magis quam eius, quam a magistro suscepit, inventor. Is ergo dum assignare cupit, scripta Mosis nihil in se divinae sapientiae nihilque operis sancti spiritus continere, exaggerat huiusmodi dicta et dicit, nullo modo fieri potuisse ut tam breve spatium tot animalium genera eorumque cibos, qui per totum annum sufficerent, capere potuisset. Cum enim bina et bina ex immundis animalibus, hoc est, bini masculi et binae feminae (hoc enim indicat sermo repetitus), ex mundis vero septena et septena, quod est paria septena in arcam dicantur inducta, quomodo, inquit, fieri potuit istud spatium, quod scriptum est, ut quattuor saltem solos elephantes capere potuerit? Et posteaquam per singulas species hoc modo refragatur, addit super omnia his verbis: [p. 113] constat ergo fictam esse fabulam; quod si est, constat, non esse a deo hanc scripturam.”1)
[English: “But against all these things, so skilfully put together, certain people raise questions, and above all Apelles, who was indeed a disciple of Marcion, but rather the inventor of another heresy than of the one he received from his master. He, then, in his desire to show that the writings of Moses contain nothing of divine wisdom and nothing of the work of the Holy Spirit, enlarges on sayings of this kind and says that it could in no way have happened that so small a space could hold so many kinds of animals and their food, enough to last a whole year. For since two and two of the unclean animals, that is, two males and two females (for this is what the repeated word indicates), but seven and seven of the clean, that is, seven pairs, are said to have been brought into the ark, how, he asks, could that space, as it is written, have held even four elephants alone? And after he has objected in this way about each kind, he adds over and above everything, in these words: It is clear, then, that the story is made up; and if so, it is clear that this scripture is not from God.”]
[p. 113]
Add to this:
Orig. c. Cels. V, 54 (Lomm. XIX p. 268 sq.): Ἐπεὶ δὲ φιλαλήθως τὰ κατὰ τὸν τόπον ἐξετάζομεν, φήσομεν, ὅτι ὁ Μαρκίωνος γνώριμος Ἀπελλῆς, αἱρέσεώς τινος γενόμενος πατὴρ καὶ μῦθον ἡγούμενος εἶναι τὰ Ἰουδαίων γράμματα, φησίν, ὅτι μόνος οὗτος (scil. Χριστός) ἐπιδεδήμηκε τῷ γένει τῶν ἀνθρώπων.2) [English: “But since we are examining the matters of this passage with a love of truth, we shall say that Apelles, Marcion’s pupil, who became the father of a certain heresy and held the writings of the Jews to be a myth, says that this one alone (namely Christ) has visited the race of men.”]
The spirit in which Apelles wrote his “Syllogisms” can well be recognized from these brief reports and samples. Marcion in his “Antitheses” had applied a purely religious criticism to the Old Testament. He held strictly to the idea that it everywhere reproduces factual truth, but for that very reason he concluded that the God of the Old Testament must be another than the highest, good God. His pupil Apelles, on the other hand, became convinced that the books of Moses consist of myths, that is, that they were forged by men and can therefore make no claim to be drawn upon for any theology at all (whether for knowledge of the world-creator or for knowledge of the highest God). “Omnia, quaecumque Moyses de deo scripserit, vera non esse, sed falsa”; ἀνθρώπινα καὶ ψευδῆ εἶναι τὰ γεγραμμένα; ψευδῆ λελαληκότας καὶ θεὸν μὴ ἐγνωκότας; οὐχ ἅγια τὰ Μωϋσέως συγγράμματα; “scripta Mosis nihil in se divinae sapientiae nihilque operis sancti spiritus continere”; ψευδὴς ἄρα ὁ μῦθος· οὐκ ἄρα ἐκ θεοῦ ἡ γραφή; μῦθον ἡγούμενος εἶναι τὰ Ἰουδαίων γράμματα [English: “that whatever Moses wrote about God is not true but false”; “that what is written is human and false”; “as men who had spoken falsehoods and had not known God”; “the writings of Moses are not holy”; “that the writings of Moses contain nothing of divine wisdom and nothing of the work of the Holy Spirit”; “so the story is false; so the scripture is not from God”; “holding the writings of the Jews to be a myth”]: that is the result of his criticism. To present it impressively he wrote the great work of the Syllogisms, an achievement whose diligence even his con-
Notes [p. 113]
1) Partly preserved in Greek in the catenae, see Lommatzsch l. c. p. 102 sq.: Ἐπηπόρουν τινὲς εἰ δύναται ἡ τηλικαύτη κιβωτὸς χωρῆσαι κἂν τὸ πολλοστὸν μόριον τῶν ἐπὶ γῆς πάντων ζώων. Καὶ μάλιστα Ἀπελλῆς ὁ τοῦ Μαρκίωνος γνώριμος καὶ γενόμενος ἑτέρας αἱρέσεως παρ᾽ ἐκεῖνον πατήρ, ἀθετεῖν βουλόμενος ὡς οὐχ ἅγια τὰ Μωϋσέως συγγράμματα, τοῦτο ἐπαπορήσας ἐπιφέρει τό· ψευδὴς ἄρα ὁ μῦθος· οὐκ ἄρα ἐκ θεοῦ ἡ γραφή. [English: “Some raised the difficulty whether an ark of that size could hold even the smallest fraction of all the animals on earth. And above all Apelles, the pupil of Marcion, who became the father of another heresy besides his, wishing to set aside the writings of Moses as not holy, raises this difficulty and adds: ‘So the story is false; so the scripture is not from God.’”]
2) What else Origen brought forward about Apelles can no more be traced back with any certainty to the Syllogisms than what Hippolytus reported in the Syntagma.
[p. 114]
temporary opponent Rhodon had to acknowledge, however unwillingly: “Apelles committed countless outrages against the law of Moses, blasphemed the divine words in several writings, and took no small pains to refute them and overturn them completely, as he at least truly believed.” Those „πλείονα συγγράμματα“ [several writings] (“habet suos libros, quos inscripsit Syllogismorum” [he has his own books, which he entitled ‘of Syllogisms’]) are illustrated by Ambrose’s report that the criticism of the story of the Fall stood in the thirty-eighth volume of the Syllogisms. How extensive the work must therefore have been! It must undoubtedly have been the arsenal of reasonable objections against the factual truth of the Mosaic history. Reasonable objections, I say: for, as the title already tells us1) and as the samples in Ambrose and Origen prove, Apelles proceeded by a rationalistic-dialectical method. The age still lacked every means of practising a truly historical criticism; such criticism appears only in timid beginnings, and even there strangely disguised, for example in the letter of Ptolemaeus to Flora. But the inner, rational criticism seems to have been practised by Apelles with great virtuosity that deserves recognition. What can be said against his objections about Noah’s ark? How finely the mythical character of the primeval history is brought to light in the three fragments in Ambrose! Besides this, the religious, Pauline spirit of the Marcionite school comes out strongly and strikingly in the first two fragments. How can the tree of life do more for life than God’s breathing-in of the spirit of life? A question that surely hits the nail on the head. But the other question goes deeper still: “If God did not create man perfect, but each man gains the perfection of virtue by his own effort, does not man seem to gain for himself something greater than God has given him?” Here the Christian teacher schooled in Pauline theology speaks against the common
Notes [p. 114]
1) The Valentinian Alexander also wrote “Syllogisms” (Tert. de carne 17), but we know nothing more about them. In both cases the title shows that the work is one of logical and dialectical content.
[p. 115]
apologetic theology, which stressed freedom at the expense of grace. One seems to hear Augustine against Pelagius and Julian of Eclanum, and this passage too can supply a proof of the well-known fact that Marcion anticipated Augustine. The third syllogism is less significant, because it is purely formal: that God could not threaten death, since men did not know it at all.1)
After what has been reported, we must lament that so little of the extensive work has been preserved for us. Consider that the same theologian who distinguished himself by the boldest criticism, and who was the first to speak of myths in the O. T., confessed in resignation at the end of his life (see Rhodon in Euseb., h. e. V, 13): μὴ δεῖν ὅλως ἐξετάζειν τὸν λόγον, ἀλλ᾽ ἕκαστον, ὡς πεπίστευκε, διαμένειν. σωθήσεσθαι γὰρ τοὺς ἐπὶ τὸν ἐσταυρωμένον ἠλπικότας (ἀπεφαίνετο), μόνον ἐὰν ἐν ἔργοις ἀγαθοῖς εὑρίσκωνται. τὸ δὲ πάντων ἀσαφέστατον (ἐδογματίζετο αὐτῷ) πρᾶγμα τὸ περὶ θεοῦ. (ἔλεγε μὲν γὰρ) μίαν ἀρχὴν . . . . τὰς μὲν προφητείας ἑαυτὰς ἐλέγχειν διὰ τὸ μηδὲν ὅλως ἀληθὲς εἰρηκέναι· ἀσύμφωνοι γὰρ ὑπάρχουσι καὶ ψευδεῖς καὶ ἑαυταῖς ἀντικείμεναι. τὸ δὲ πῶς ἐστι μία ἀρχὴ μὴ γινώσκειν (ἔλεγεν), οὕτω δὲ κινεῖσθαι μόνον. [English: “that one should not examine the account at all, but each should remain as he has believed. For those who have set their hope on the Crucified will be saved (he declared), if only they are found in good works. But the most obscure of all things (in his teaching) was the matter of God. (For he spoke of) one principle . . . . that the prophecies refute themselves because they have said nothing true at all; for they are inconsistent and false and contradict themselves. But how there is one principle he did not know (he said); he was simply moved to hold it.”] When one considers that one and the same man shows himself in these utterances,2) one may well be eager to hear more from him.
And in fact seven further fragments can be brought forward from Ambrose’s treatise de paradiso. I shall
Notes [p. 115]
1) This objection is also found in the pseudo-Justinian Quaest. et Respons. ad Orthodoxos 91 (Otto IV p. 130): Εἰ πρὸ τῆς παραβάσεως ὁ Ἀδὰμ λογικοῦ ἢ ἀλόγου οὐ τεθέαται θάνατον, πῶς ὃν οὐκ εἶδεν, ὡς ἑωρακώς, ἀπειληθέντα ἐδειλίασε θάνατον; Πῶς δὲ τοῦτον ἀγνοούμενον αὐτῷ ὡς ἐγνωσμένον ἠπείλησεν ὁ θεός; [English: “If before the transgression Adam had not seen the death of any rational or irrational creature, how was he afraid of the death he was threatened with, which he had not seen, as though he had seen it? And how did God threaten him with it as though it were known to him, when it was unknown to him?”] Perhaps much else in those Questions also flowed from the Syllogisms of Apelles, but it cannot be separated out. Cf. also Quaest. 33 of the pseudo-Augustinian Dialogus cum Orosio (Opp. Aug. App. V p. 1559, ed. Venet. 1763): “Quomodo poterat timere mortem Adam, quam nullatenus sciebat?” [How could Adam fear death, which he did not know at all?]
2) May one perhaps assume that Apelles was influenced by Aristotelianism, because he wrote “Syllogisms” and because both the „μία ἀρχή“ [one principle] and the „μὴ γινώσκειν πῶς ἐστι μία ἀρχή, οὕτω δὲ κινεῖσθαι μόνον“ [not knowing how there is one principle, but simply being moved to hold it] recall the Peripatetic philosophy?
[p. 116]
first set them out together, and then prove that they come from the Syllogisms of Apelles.
1) De Parad. VI, 30: “Rursus faciunt alias quaestiones hoc modo: Non semper malum est non obedire praecepto. Si enim bonum est praeceptum, honesta est obeditio; quod si improbum praeceptum, non obedire utile. Ergo non semper malum est non obedire praecepto, sed bono praecepto non obedire improbum est. Bonum autem est operatorium cognitionis boni et mali lignum, quando quidem deus et bonum et malum novit. Denique ait: ‘Ecce Adam factus est tamquam unus nostrum.’ Si igitur bonum est, scientiam habere boni et mali, bona autem est quam etiam deus habet, videtur qui interdicit eam hominibus, non recte interdicere, idque proponunt.”
[English: “Again they make other questions in this way: It is not always evil not to obey a command. For if the command is good, obedience is honourable; but if the command is wicked, not to obey is useful. So it is not always evil not to obey a command; it is wicked not to obey a good command. But the tree that works the knowledge of good and evil is good, since God knows both good and evil. Indeed he says: ‘Behold, Adam has become like one of us.’ If, then, it is good to have the knowledge of good and evil, and it is good since God too has it, he who forbids it to men seems not to forbid rightly; and this is what they put forward.”]
2) L. c. VI, 31: “Alia quaestio: Qui non cognoscit bonum et malum, nihil a parvulo distat; parvuli autem apud iustum iudicem nulla est culpa. Iustus autem operator mundi nunquam parvulum vocasset in culpam, propter quod non cognoverat bonum et malum, quia parvulus sine ullo est crimine praevaricationis et culpae.”
[English: “Another question: He who does not know good and evil differs in nothing from a little child; and before a just judge a little child bears no guilt. Now the just maker of the world would never have charged a little child with guilt for not having known good and evil, since a little child is free of any charge of transgression and guilt.”]
3) L. c. VI, 32: “Rursum quaestiones serunt: Qui nescit, inquiunt, bonum et malum, ne ipsum quidem novit esse malum non servare mandatum, nec ipsum bonum novit, quod est obedire mandato. Et ideo quia non noverat, venia, inquiunt, dignus fuit, qui non obedivit, non condemnatione.”
[English: “Again they sow questions: He who does not know good and evil, they say, does not even know that it is evil not to keep a commandment, nor does he know the good itself, which is to obey a commandment. And so, because he did not know, he who did not obey was worthy of pardon, they say, not of condemnation.”]
4) L. c. VII, 35: “Iterum alia quaestio subrepit unde mors accideret Adae, utrum a natura ligni eiusmodi an vero a deo. Si naturae ligni hoc adscribimus, videtur ligni huius fructus vivificandi insufflationi dei praestare, siquidem quem vivificaverat insufflatio, fructus huius ligni traxit ad mortem. Aut si deum operatorem mortis esse memoramus, dicunt quod gemina eum opinione accusemus, quod aut ita immitis, ut noluerit ignoscere, cum posset, aut si ignoscere non potuerit, videatur infirmus.”
[English: “Again another question creeps in: where did death come to Adam from, from the nature of such a tree or from God? If we ascribe this to the nature of the tree, the fruit of this tree seems to surpass the life-giving breath of God, since the fruit of this tree dragged to death the one whom the breath had made alive. Or if we say that God is the worker of death, they say that we accuse him in a twofold way: either he was so harsh that he would not forgive when he could, or, if he could not forgive, he seems weak.”]
5) L. c. VIII, 38: “Iterum quaestio: Sciebat praevaricaturum deus Adam mandata sua an nesciebat? Si nesciebat, non est ista divinae potestatis assertio; si autem sciebat et nihilominus sciens neglegenda mandavit, non est dei aliquid superfluum praecipere; superfluum autem praecepit protoplasto illi Adae, quod eum noverat minime servaturum; nihil autem deus superfluum facit; ergo [p. 117] non est scriptura ex deo. Hoc enim obiciunt, qui Vetus non recipiunt Testamentum et has interserunt quaestiones.”
[English: “Again a question: Did God know that Adam would transgress his commandments, or did he not know? If he did not know, this is no assertion of divine power; but if he knew, and nevertheless, knowing it, gave commandments that would be neglected, it is not God’s way to command anything superfluous; yet he commanded something superfluous to that first-formed Adam, since he knew that Adam would not keep it at all; but God does nothing superfluous; therefore the scripture is not from God. For this is what those object who do not receive the Old Testament and who insert these questions.”]
[p. 117]
6) L. c. VIII, 40: “Iterum hinc aliam faciunt quaestionem, ut ad invicem mandati eius, quod diximus in hominis opinione consistere, hanc ipsam opinionem impressam a deo nobis tamquam praescriptum divinae legis accusent. Noverat, inquiunt, hominem peccaturum, qui creavit eum et has opiniones boni et mali impressit, annon noverat? Ut si dixeris quia non noverat, alienum a maiestate dei sentias; si autem dixeris quia sciens deus peccaturum hominem, communes tamen opiniones ei boni et mali impressit, ut propter admixtionem malorum vitae perpetuitatem servare non posset, sicut in illo non praesagum futuri, ita in hoc non bonum deum significare videaris. Atque hinc argumentantur quia non est creatura hominis a deo facta. Nam sicut supra ostendimus eos dicere quod non est mandatum dei, sic et hic dicunt: Non ergo creatura hominis a deo, quia deus malum non fecit. Homo autem opinionem accepit mali, dum a malis praecipitur abstinere. Hoc autem genere alium bonum deum, alium operatorem hominis conantur asserere.”
[English: “Again, from here they make another question: turning about the commandment which we said consists in man’s opinion, they accuse this very opinion, impressed on us by God like a prescription of the divine law. Did the one who created man, they say, and impressed these opinions of good and evil on him, know that man would sin, or did he not know? If you say that he did not know, you think something foreign to the majesty of God; but if you say that God, knowing that man would sin, nevertheless impressed on him common opinions of good and evil, so that because of the admixture of evils he could not keep the everlasting continuance of life, then, just as in the first case you seem to show a God who does not foresee the future, so in this case you seem to show a God who is not good. And from this they argue that the creation of man was not made by God. For just as we showed above that they say it is not God’s commandment, so here too they say: so the creation of man is not from God, because God did not make evil. But man received the opinion of evil when he is commanded to abstain from evils. And in this way they try to assert that the good God is one and the maker of man another.”]
7) L. c. VIII, 41: “Dicunt, quomodo bonus deus, qui non solum passus est introire in hunc mundum malitiam, sed etiam in tantam confusionem venire permisit?”
[English: “They say: how is he a good God who not only allowed malice to enter this world but also permitted it to come into such great confusion?”]
That these seven pieces are all taken from the Syllogisms of Apelles follows from the following considerations:
a) Chapters V–VIII of the treatise de paradiso, which contain the 3 + 7 objections, form a sharply bounded unit among the 15 chapters of the whole tract. Here Ambrose takes up objections from the heretical side.1) Since the first three are expressly introduced with the formula “Plerique enim, quorum auctor Apelles, sicut habes in XXXVIII. tomo eius, has quaestiones proponunt” [For most of them, whose author is Apelles, as you have it in his 38th tome, put forward these questions], it is certain that
Notes [p. 117]
1) The objection in c. IX, 42, “Sunt qui putant nequaquam mandatum istud (de manducando et non manducando) convenire coeli et terrae atque omnium creatori, nequaquam dignum incolis paradisi, eo quod illa vita similis angelorum sit” [There are those who think that this commandment (about eating and not eating) by no means befits the creator of heaven and earth and of all things, and is by no means worthy of the inhabitants of paradise, because that life is like the life of the angels], is of a different kind from the ones refuted before it; for Ambrose essentially accepts it, since he too in what follows allegorizes the “food.” So it no longer comes from the same source as the preceding ones.
[p. 118]
the following ones too, which are introduced with “Rursus faciunt alias quaestiones, etc.” [Again they make other questions, etc.], come from Apelles.
b) In form the seven objections are of the same kind as the three expressly marked as Apelleian; they too have syllogistic form, and so they show themselves to have flowed from the “Syllogisms.”
c) In detail, the Marcionite and Apelleian character of the objections can also be established by particular considerations. As for the first of them, the sentence “Non semper malum est non obedire praecepto” [It is not always evil not to obey a command] is genuinely Marcionite; for Marcion and his school, as is well known, recognized the merely relative significance of the law and of obedience. As for the second syllogism, one may perhaps recall that Marcion, the teacher of Apelles, formed an antithesis out of the conduct of Christ and of the prophet Elisha toward children. The third syllogism has nothing characteristic about it except the dialectical subtlety that he who does not yet know the distinction between good and evil is not yet able to appreciate the badness of disobedience and the goodness of obedience. But the fourth syllogism shows its origin from Apelles strikingly. When it says that the tree of knowledge worked more powerfully than God’s breathing-in, since it could kill the life that came from that breathing, this was obviously thought up by the same man who wrote: “Quomodo lignum vitae plus operari videtur ad vitam quam insufflatio dei” [How is it that the tree of life seems to do more for life than the breath of God]; and that syllogism is expressly marked as coming from Apelles (V, 28). The fifth piece shows its origin from Apelles just as clearly. It closes with the words “Ergo non est scriptura ex deo” [Therefore the scripture is not from God]. But the fragment that Origen has preserved for us closes in exactly the same way: “constat non esse a deo hanc scripturam” [it is clear that this scripture is not from God]. And as if that were not enough, Ambrose adds: “Hoc enim obiciunt, qui Vetus non recipiunt Testamentum et has interserunt quaestiones. Verum hi sua sententia et opinione vincendi sunt. Cum enim Novi Testamenti non refutant fidem, exemplo sunt arguendi ut Vetus credant” [For this is what those object who do not receive the Old Testament and who insert these questions. But these must be defeated by their own judgment and opinion. For since they do not reject the faith of the New Testament, they must be convinced by its example to believe the Old]. Here one recognizes the school of Marcion, and in what follows Ambrose refutes Apelles with the same means by which Tertullian tried to refute Marcion. He shows, namely, that Christ too made Judas an apostle
[p. 119]
although he knew that Judas would betray him. “Conticescant igitur repugnatores isti Veteris Testamenti” [Let those opponents of the Old Testament therefore fall silent]. The subtle argument in the sixth syllogism could in itself be Marcionite just as well as Apelleian. But the refutation that Ambrose appends rules out Marcion himself. He writes: “Quibus respondendum est illico secundum opinionem suam. Si enim hominem nolunt a deo factum, quia peccator est homo, et hoc refugiunt, ne bonus deus peccatorem fecisse videatur, quia non putant bonum, qui fecerit peccatorem, dicant, utrum operatorem hominis a deo factum putent. Si enim a deo factus est ille, ut dicunt, operator hominis, quomodo bonus deus operatorem mali fecit?” [English: “These must be answered at once from their own opinion. For if they will not have man made by God because man is a sinner, and shrink from this so that the good God may not seem to have made a sinner, since they do not think him good who made a sinner, let them say whether they think the maker of man was made by God. For if, as they say, that maker of man was made by God, how did the good God make the maker of evil?”] As is well known, Marcion did not teach that the world-creator was created by the good God, but Apelles did teach it (see my monograph p. 55 sq.); and what follows in Ambrose is also his doctrine: “Quod si dicunt non esse genitum operatorem mali (that is, he was not begotten as the author of evil), requirendum utrum bonus deus potuerit inhibere quoquo modo incipientem malitiam, annon potuerit?” [But if they say that the maker was not begotten as one of evil, it must be asked whether the good God could in some way have checked malice as it began, or could not?]
For these reasons it follows that the seven pieces, like the three that precede them, really are taken from the Syllogisms of Apelles.1) We now also understand how this work had to become so enormously extensive. If ten syllogisms were set against one or two verses of Genesis alone, the work could easily run to 38 books and more.2)
How did the Syllogisms of Apelles reach Ambrose? It is highly unlikely that he had them in his own hands. One need only read the refutations in c. V–VIII
Notes [p. 119]
1) Note also the Marcionite and Apelleian judgment of the world in the seventh piece: “non solum passus est introire in hunc mundum malitiam, sed etiam in tantam confusionem venire permisit” [he not only allowed malice to enter this world but also permitted it to come into such great confusion].
2) Possibly what Grabe (Spicil. I p. 306 sq.) took from Moses Bar-Cepha, Part III, Comment. de Paradiso c. 1, p. 200 sq., ed. Antwerp 1569, about Simon Magus’ criticism of the Mosaic primeval history should also be traced back to the Syllogisms; but a decision is impossible.
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attentively and compare them with the tenor of Ambrose’s own works to see at once that the whole section is taken over. Ambrose himself could not write like this. As for the source, one can only waver between Hippolytus and Origen, who were also Ambrose’s authorities in the Hexaemeron3) (see Jerome, ep. 84, 7, to Pammachius). Without deciding with certainty, I would rather think of Origen (his Commentary on Genesis), who has indeed preserved for us a large fragment of the Syllogisms. No weight, of course, can be given to the report of Praedestinatus (c. 22): “Apellitas Origenes ita perfecte superavit, ut eorum causa periodeutes fieret et per singulas quasque urbes per orientem eundo praedicaret” [Origen overcame the Apellites so completely that on their account he became a travelling preacher and preached as he went through every single city in the East].