F. Sylburgius, Praefatio in Excerpta ex scriptis Theodoti

Extracts from the Works of Theodotus and the So-Called Eastern Teaching in the Times of Valentinus.

Excerpts from the Writings of Theodotus and the Doctrine Which is Called Oriental Belonging to the Times of Valentinus, translated by Robert Pearse, M.A.

The following selections from Theodotus display indeed for the most part the style and diction of Clement, yet in doctrines they do not altogether agree with him; so that if they were excerpted by Clement, most of them would seem to be recorded not as Clement's opinion, but as that of Theodotus. On which matter I leave the judgement to the more discerning. Hervetus indeed

did not translate them: either because they are everywhere mutilated and corrupted, or because they are not altogether orthodox, as repeatedly alleging the opinions of Basilides also and of Valentinus. Sylburg. — Here Clement seems carefully to note down and set forth whole expositions of the Valentinians and other heretics, so that it appears to be rather their commentary than that of Clement himself and of a truly ecclesiastical man. For on that account the work was entitled by him, or even by the epitomizer Theodotus, "in the times (chronous) of Valentinus," unless rather we should read "Aeons (aionas)," or unless either Clement or even Theodotus intended the one for the other and as it were synonymous: in God and the angels rather "Aeons," in us, according to what is passible and in this mortal time and state of things, "times." So that it is an exposition of passages of Scripture or even of the mysteries of the Christian religion according to the mind of Valentinus and his Aeons and quasi-theogony, not against him: and I wonder that a work in that sense could have proceeded from an ecclesiastical man, or at least that Eusebius passed it over in silence. But if he himself thought that these things, as monstrous and foreign to the ecclesiastical rule, were sufficiently refuted by the very recital of them, much as Epiphanius did in the work already cited, the Ancoratus, he certainly ought to have set forth his own sense and mind more distinctly, and separated the precious from the vile. Although men of so early an age, who were the first to undertake the cultivation of the field of the Scriptures thus bristling with the opinions of heretics, do not lack all excuse if they did not root out many of their weeds, and saw their own views almost fused and confused together with theirs in that work. Though it is more probable that Clement arranged his treatise with greater clearness, and indicated more plainly what was ecclesiastical and what Valentinian and heretical, which the epitomizer did not thus observe. Who this Theodotus was is all too uncertain, since Theodotus is also cited here as one who was more ancient than Clement and of the sect of Valentinus. I know not whether Theodotus of Ancyra, Cyril's colleague against Nestorius, sufficiently approved by the Patriarch Nicephorus in his Antirrhetici, can be said to have bestowed labour upon these matters, and hence to have contracted blemishes, so as to have seemed not sufficiently sound in the faith of the Deity, just as neither does Eusebius with his Origen, who feeds his mind on ideas or uncertain conjectures and divines for himself, certainly bring forward anything in which the reader may rest. With this caution have I undertaken to explain this work, whatever contribution I may make towards it, and so that we may hunt for some lights of antiquity in it in such a way that our uncontaminated and truly ecclesiastical faith may suffer no harm from those fables and figments of heretics, but rather grow stronger to laugh at the dirges and trifles of men truly foolish in their own wisdom. See Epiphanius, Heresy 31, Irenaeus throughout his whole work Against Heresies, Tertullian, and others. The fact that the title presents "Eastern Teaching" is an indication that he who so entitled it was rather a European, or subject to that see, who wished thereby to mark out the Asians or Syrians. Such were those "Orientals," from whom came those dregs of the Valentinians and of the rest of the heretics of almost the first age. Combefis. — Ignatius mentions Theodotus in the interpolated Epistle to the Trallians, ch. 11, where compare what Cotelier has noted. Compare also what has been adduced above from Valesius on Stromata I, chap. 21.