How ’Valentinian’ Was Heracleon’s Reading of the Healing of the Son of a Royal Official?

• The interpretation of a Johannine healing story by the second-century Christian teacher Heracleon has in previous scholarship been presumed to be determined by “Valentinian” sectarian doctrines; Heracleon has been said to identify the royal official in the story with the Maker (δημιουργός), an inferior divinity who has created the material world, and his son as one of three categories of human beings whose eternal fate are determined by their spiritual, animated, or material inherent nature. This paper attempts a novel reading of Heracleon’s interpretation, presuming neither that Heracleon subscribes to the ideas associated to “Valentinian” teachers by heresiological authors, nor that Origen of Alexandria always refers to Heracleon’s comments using verbatim quotations. The paper argues that the identification of the royal official with the Maker is inferred by Origen based on heresiological presumptions, and that Heracleon used Synoptic and Pauline parallels to read the story as a metaphor of humanity’s perilous state as afflicted with the disease of sin, and in dire need of salvation.

Ämnesord

HUMANIORA  -- Filosofi, etik och religion -- Religionsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Philosophy, Ethics and Religion -- Religious Studies (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Heracleon

Valentinus

Origen

Gospel of John

Gnosticism

Bibelvetenskap, Nt

Biblical Studies, New testament

Church History

Kyrkohistoria

Eastern Christian Studies

Östkyrkliga studier

Publikations- och innehållstyp

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