The 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica mentions Wurm’s thesis that John’s opponents were Jewish Christians, but concludes that “the antithesis of John and Cerinthus, unlike that of Paul and Cerinthus (Epiph. Haer. xxviii.), is too well based in the tradition of the early Church to be dismissed as a later dogmatic reflection, and the internal evidence of this manifesto corroborates it clearly.”
But that assumes that Cerinthus was not Jewish, an assumption contradicted by the very source that the Encyclopedia cites – Number 28 from Epiphanius’s “medicine chest” of heresies, which describes Cerinthus as a Jewish heretic who advocated circumcision.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
A Catholic Approach to Immigration
In the USCCB’s recent Special Pastoral Message, the bishops of the United States highlight the suffering inflicted…
The Classroom Heals the Wounds of Generations
“Hope,” wrote the German-American polymath Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, “is the deity of youth.” Wholly dependent on adults, children…
Still Life, Still Sacred
Renaissance painters would use life-sized wooden dolls called manichini to study how drapery folds on the human…
