How Reliable Is Irenaeus as a Source? (4 of 9)

Irenaeus gives us the shortest chain anyone has back to the apostles. He also makes an error about Jesus so large that it functions as a permanent caution.

Both facts are load-bearing, and using him well means holding them together.

Who Was Irenaeus?

Bishop of Lyons in Gaul in the late second century, originally from Asia Minor.

His major surviving work is a five-book attack on Gnostic teaching, usually called Against Heresies. He also wrote a shorter positive summary of Christian teaching, which survives in Armenian.

Against Heresies survives mostly in an early Latin translation, with Greek fragments preserved in quotation. So even here we are reading through a layer.

What Is the Polycarp Chain?

The reason Irenaeus matters more than his date suggests.

He says he saw and heard Polycarp when he was young, and that Polycarp had been instructed by the apostles and had conversed with people who had seen Christ, and had been appointed by the apostles as bishop in Smyrna. He adds that Polycarp remained a long time, which is why the memory stuck.

That is two links between Irenaeus and the apostolic generation. For the ancient world, two links is remarkably short.

It is also a childhood memory, and Irenaeus says as much. He describes hearing Polycarp in the first period of his own life. Childhood memories of a revered figure are vivid and they are not neutral, and he is deploying the chain inside an argument about which teaching is authentic.

What Does Irenaeus Say About John at Ephesus?

That John the disciple of the Lord, the one who leaned on his breast, put out his Gospel while living at Ephesus, and that he remained among the Ephesians until the times of Trajan.

Trajan takes the throne in AD 98. That claim, more than any other, is why the church has held that one apostle lived to old age rather than dying a martyr.

It is early, it comes with the Polycarp chain behind it, and it is stated matter-of-factly rather than argued for. Within the constraints of what survives, it is about as good as this kind of tradition gets.

Why Does Irenaeus Argue for Four Gospels?

Because his opponents were using different books, and some of them used only one.

His argument for exactly four is not one modern readers find persuasive on its own terms. He appeals to there being four zones of the world and four principal winds, and to the four living creatures. That is symbolic reasoning, and it is the part usually quoted to make him look foolish.

The underlying claim is more interesting. He is not deriving four Gospels from the winds. He is defending a fourfold collection that the churches he knows are already using, and reaching for reasons why the number is fitting. The collection comes first and the argument comes after.

That makes him the earliest sustained witness to a settled four-Gospel arrangement, which is a substantial contribution regardless of what one makes of the winds.

Where Does Irenaeus Get Things Wrong?

He argues that Jesus was close to fifty years old.

The reasoning runs through John 8:57, where opponents say Jesus is not yet fifty, and Irenaeus takes that as an indication of his approximate age, adding that the elders in Asia who knew John transmitted this. He is arguing against a Gnostic scheme that required a short ministry, and the age serves that argument.

It is wrong, and it is wrong in a way that is instructive. He is not fabricating. He is reasoning from a text, appealing to tradition received from the same Asian elders he trusts elsewhere, and arriving at a conclusion the Gospels do not support.

That is the caution. The same chain of transmission that gives us John at Ephesus also gave Irenaeus a wildly inflated age for Jesus, and he could not tell the difference from the inside.

He also reports his opponents’ teaching in a hostile summary, which is normal for the genre and means his account of Gnostic systems needs checking against Gnostic sources where those survive.

How Should Irenaeus Be Used?

As a strong witness with a declared agenda, which is a description rather than a complaint.

He is close to the first century by an unusually short route. He names his sources. He is transmitting what churches were actually doing rather than inventing it. Where he reports what he received about people and places, he is among the best evidence available.

Where he reasons toward a conclusion his argument needs, the reasoning has to be checked. The Jesus-was-fifty passage is the proof that this is not a theoretical concern.

Both things are true of him at once, and a source used honestly is used with both in view.

Part of a series on the ancient witnesses behind what we know about the early church. See the overview of the witnesses.

Footnotes2

1. The age question is worth more than a footnote in most treatments. Irenaeus appeals to the elders in Asia as his authority, and those same elders stand behind the Ephesus material about John. Accepting one and rejecting the other is defensible, since the Ephesus claim concerns a place and a lifespan while the age claim contradicts the Gospels directly. But the grounds for the distinction should be stated rather than assumed.
2. Reading Against Heresies in Latin translation is a standing reminder of how much of this literature survives at one remove. Where Greek fragments exist they generally confirm the Latin, which is reassuring, but the base text is a translation.

Sources

Irenaeus, Five Books of S. Irenaeus Against Heresies, trans. John Keble (Oxford: James Parker, 1872). Book 3.1.1 for the Gospel of John at Ephesus, 3.3.4 for the Polycarp chain and the survival into Trajan's reign, 3.11.8 for the four-Gospel argument, and 2.22 for the age of Jesus. Keble's translation is out of copyright and in the public domain.

Where the sourcing stops: the reading of the four-Gospel passage as defending an existing collection rather than deriving one is a common scholarly view rather than my invention, but the way I have weighed it here is my own. Treating the age-of-Jesus error as a control on the Asian tradition generally is my own argument.