Cerinthus in the Chapters Against Gaius : Reconsidering the Hippolytan Heresiological Tradition

Abstract: The lost dialogue known as the Chapters Against Gaius is here identified as neither a genuine work of Hippolytus nor a scholarly figment, but an anonymous work of the mid-third century drawing heavily from various Hippolytan writings. The bizarre assertion of its antagonist Gaius that the gnostic Cerinthus wrote John’s Gospel and Apocalypse, along with the character of Gaius himself and the novel Judaistic portrait of Cerinthus, are all explained as dramatic fictions rooted in specific misreadings and embellished with creative liberties. The details about Cerinthus, as preserved especially in Dionysius bar Ṣalibi, reveal the work’s relation to Hippolytus’s lost Syntagma , the lost Dialogue with Proclus (also probably Hippolytus’s), Dionysius of Alexandria’s lost writings, and the extant heresy catalogues of Epiphanius and Filaster. Our knowledge of the Syntagma is enriched, as additional material from it is identified, along with an early expanded recension drawing from the Chapters . Since one ancient author’s mistake of regarding the contrived controversy within the Chapters as real launched a cascade of misinformation, the ancient reception of the Johannine books deserves reevaluation. Besides disentangling the historical Cerinthus, these findings also illuminate the vexed question of Hippolytus’s literary corpus.