Some years ago I briefed the Westar Institute’s conclusion that Gnosticism didn’t exist. It is a modern construct. The term in antiquity never designated any sect or set of beliefs; and what the term designated in modern times never existed in antiquity—every sect possessed some traits modern scholars designated “Gnostic” while no sect possessed every trait modern scholars designated “Gnostic.” There simply was no Gnosticism. You could find this or that feature of it in some sect or other. But as all sects could claim this, the term designates nothing. There was no meaningful difference between “Gnostic” and “Non-Gnostic” sects. It was a false paradigm all along (see my article Gnosticism Didn’t Exist (Say What Now?)).

This is much like “Q” and “Oral Gospel Tradition” and many other assumptions in the field: invented by modern scholars, and never established by any reliable evidence to have existed. They probably didn’t (see Why Do We Still Believe in Q? and Robyn Faith Walsh and the Gospels as Literature). Indeed, Q, like Gnosticism, didn’t even exist as an ancient idea. Just like the false belief, also invented by modern scholars, that “High Christology” was a late development rather than original to the faith. False. It was original to the faith, and only leaked out in the otherwise-concealing Gospels over time, but was always there, from the beginning (see Bart Ehrman on How Jesus Became God and Chrissy Hansen on the Pre-Existent Jesus; likewise Establishing the Biblical Literalism of Early Christians).

I have long suspected this is also true of Docetism. Although in this case, like “Oral Gospel Tradition,” the concept did exist in antiquity—and unlike Gnosticism, ancient heresiologists did name a sect “the Docetists”—I don’t think it existed in reality, because what ancient heresiologists meant by the term does not correspond to what modern scholars reinvented that word to mean. “Docetism” as now and commonly understood is a modern construct, not an ancient one. And that simply didn’t exist. I have not confirmed this. Like Gnosticism did, it requires a fuller study that I haven’t had time to conduct. So I will discuss here what that fuller study would consist of, but the gist of this article is simply to outline a suspicion, not a conclusion—my current working hypothesis. Hereafter I’ll speak as if it is a fact, but take note I am only in this article speaking hypothetically. It would just be tedious to keep formulating convoluted sentences to that effect, so I won’t; I’ll just leave the caution noted here.

But I could be right. My own similar unproved suspicions regarding Gnosticism after my six-year post-doc study of the historicity of Jesus led to my never mentioning it anywhere in my resulting thesis On the Historicity of Jesus. That suspicion was then vindicated by the Westar Institute (anachronistically known as the Jesus Seminar; of which I am a Fellow), whose official conclusion was adamant: Gnosticism did not exist in antiquity; it was invented by modern scholars and has only been applied anachronistically, and to the detriment of understanding early and developing Christianity. They recommend abandoning the paradigm altogether. I agree.

So…

What Do We Do with Docetism?

Wikipedia will give you a decent brief on what “Docetism” is (see also the online Catholic Encyclopedia). But as the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church puts it: “In the early Church” it was “a tendency, rather than a formulated and unified doctrine, which considered the humanity and sufferings of the earthly Christ as apparent rather than real.” Or in Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible: “A designation for various views regarding the humanity of Christ that began to manifest themselves in the late 1st century” that was “a by-product of the Hellenistic environment of early Christianity” which, “philosophically, made a radical distinction between the material and the spiritual, and thus denied that the spiritual Christ actually assumed human form.” That is the modern concept. And that is the Docetism I suspect never existed in antiquity. No one believed that. Nor was anyone attacked for believing it besides (maybe) a single person—Marcion (and in a completely different sense, Basilides), and probably falsely. So the notion that an array of sects did this wasn’t even an ancient fabrication. It’s entirely a modern one.

Eerdmans outright calls Docetism “a denial of the Incarnation” and thus even Christ’s “Resurrection.” But no one believed that either—again, apart from, maybe, Basilides or Marcion. Other than his, all known Christian sects (certainly in the first three centuries) affirmed both the Incarnation and the Resurrection. The Oxford Dictionary, in typical fashion for this subject, even contradicts itself by immediately listing as examples of Docetism the claims that Judas Iscariot or Simon of Cyrene “changed places” with Jesus during the crucifixion. But that’s compatible with an Incarnation (motivating the need to escape an execution!). And one might say that this gets Jesus out of dying and thus rising, but that doesn’t logically follow either. Jesus still could have been imagined to die eventually—and if he died, he could rise. But we’ll take a closer look at this awkward inclusion of “crucifixiom switcheroos” under the banner of “Docetism” (solely a modern anachronism; no ancient author did this) later on here. But already you can see “Docetism” is a contradictory mess as far as any modern concept goes.

Docetism in the Bible?

To see what I mean, before listing that contradictory inclusion, the Oxford Dictionary had just finished listing verses in the Bible that indicate the existence of Docetism (through its there supposedly being denounced, even though no such word appears there, or anything like it). Let’s go through them:

Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world.

1 John 4:1-3 (cf. 2 John 7)

Clearly this is not referring to Jesus escaping the crucifixion with a switcheroo, in which belief Jesus obviously has come, and quite possibly in the flesh (hence the supposed need to dodge that very flesh getting killed). Yet this is referring to some Christian sectarian belief: “antichrist” here meaning the opposite of, yet pretending to be, the Christ; and the problem being addressed here is some in-church prophetic declarations unliked by this author. On this much scholars today are correct. Many manuscripts do add to the second horn of the disjunct: a Spirit that “does not acknowledge Jesus came in the flesh is not from God.” It is less clear to me than to most textual critics that that is an interpolation rather than an accidental omission. But either way I think the intent is that anyone claiming Jesus did not “come in the flesh” is not preaching the “real” Jesus.

This was much like (and indeed is probably deliberately emulating) how Paul warns that there are “other” Jesuses being preached in 2 Corinthians 11, a problem likewise referenced in Galatians 1. Though in neither case does Paul spell out what these alternative gospels said, the context in Paul implies it was the (original) Torah-observant gospel that he was competing with, wherein Gentiles had to convert to Judaism to be Christian, the singular thing Paul says in Galatians 2 that his gospel uniquely rejected. But to the author of John it clearly intends some other kind of dispute than any we find in Paul. Notably the author of this Epistle never actually says they are John, an Apostle, or even writing any earlier than the second century (their introduction only implies a collective authorship by Apostles, but never actually says that, remaining suspiciously anonymous). In fact 2 John, which is written in a very similar style and thus commonly concluded to be by the same author, excludes such identifications by calling its author simply “the Elder,” rather than claiming the authority of any Apostle (on why Dennis MacDonald’s attempt to reverse the most common mainstream view of this doesn’t work, see Is Jesus Wholly or Only Partly a Myth? and Dennis MacDonald’s Change of Position; cf. also Why You Should Not Believe the Apostle John Wrote the Last Gospel and Did Polycarp Meet John the Apostle?).

That aside, the evident assumption modern scholars are making is that the key part in dispute was “in the flesh”; hence, “denying the Incarnation.” I’m not so sure. I think the key dispute might have been over “having come,” ἐληλυθότα, in Greek a pun on the previous line about false prophets “having gone out,” ἐξεληλύθασιν. It’s the same word only with the addition of “out,” to describe their spreading around their notions from church to church. I suspect what this author is attacking are Christians denying Jesus in the flesh had already come—as in, came here, to Earth. In other words, we are looking at two sects, one claiming that when Jesus became flesh he came here already (a “first coming”); the other claiming that when Jesus became flesh, that happened somewhere else, and he hadn’t come to Earth yet, that that would only happen in the final apocalypse (see my discussion of this point in respect to Hebrews in OHJ, Ch. 11.5; hence for example notice that in 1 Corinthians 11:26 Paul says Christians shall take the Lord’s supper until Christ comes, not comes again). At the very least, we cannot rule this out. This is as likely a reading of this passage as any other. So we cannot simply “assume” it’s the Incarnation being denied by these “false prophets,” rather than his having come to Earth already. We need evidence to conclude that.

The Oxford Dictionary then references Colossians 2 (a known forgery, by someone later pretending to be Paul) as an evidence of a Docetist target being attacked, but you can read that all through and you’ll find no such thing. Scholars simply apply their anachronistic assumption here and thus get the text to say something they claim to be anti-Docetic, a prime example of how these false assumptions destroy sound interpretation by bringing unfounded assumptions to a text rather than reading what the text itself actually says. An actual plain reading of that whole chapter, without assumptions, and attending to its own context, gets us to a target identical to the ones the real Paul was dealing with: Torah-observant Christians insisting Gentiles get circumcised and live kosher. There is nothing actually in here about denying the Incarnation (or even the coming) of Christ. Paul’s imitator is simply explaining how Christ’s Incarnation relieves his readers of having to become Jews; his target, therefore, are Christians insisting they become Jews, not Christians denying Jesus came in the flesh.

When we instead look across the New Testament for passages actually similar to 1 John 4 and 2 John 7, we find, instead, 1 Timothy 1 (condemning Christians who “devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies”), 1 Timothy 4 (condemning Christians enraptured by “godless myths and old wives’ tales”), 2 Timothy 4 (condemning Christians who “turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths”), and 1 John 1 (which we’ll look at in a moment), as well as 2 Peter, an explicitly anti-mythicist text, not anti-incarnationist (see, likewise, On the Historicity of Jesus and the Rhetoric of Justin’s Dialogue with Trypho). These repeat concerns never found in Paul: now there are “myths” that include “genealogies” that these “false” Christians are becoming obsessed with. There is some dispute going on here about how to interpret and understand the Gospels—which did not exist in Paul’s day, nor any of the stories composing them, which is why there were no “myths” for Paul to be concerned about. These texts reflect an entirely new schism, one unknown to Paul, yet occurring in the generation after him—so, not a first-gen problem, but still quite early, before any extra-biblical record of the religion appears. Which just so happens to be exactly the generation in which the Gospels were written and promulgated.

Look at 1 John 1 in particular (the very introduction to the letter that the supposed anti-Docetist passage of 1 John 4 comes from):

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.

This is a classic example of “you protest too much” rhetoric: this author is so desperate to make clear that what he is selling was “seen, heard, and touched” that he keeps saying it over and over and over again in the space of just three sentences. Yet the similarities in vocabulary and concepts to the final redaction of the Gospel of John establish this letter as one of the last New Testament texts to be written. It clearly plays on both that Gospel’s preface and concluding chapters (including, indeed, the peculiar use of plural authorship), which in turn built on their inspiring source, the Gospel of Luke. Indeed this introduction in 1 John also riffs on the content of Luke, including the use of the collective “we” as the Christian recipients of tradition (replicated at the conclusion of John).

We are left to think that the actual Apostles wrote this letter, but the author carefully avoids ever actually claiming that—thus avoiding an overt lie, by using an ambiguous sense of “we.” The real author probably intended readers take it as they like it. In any event, whether grifter or forger, the author of this letter is presuming and relying on the final redaction of the final NT Gospel in its passive attack against otherwise undefined Christian opponents—people who, evidently, just as attested in 2 Peter, were denying anyone had actually physically met Jesus, as in touched him and hung around him, and saw him with their eyes, rather than encountering him in inner mystical visions. This contextualizes the target in the fourth chapter of this same letter not as deniers of the Incarnation, but deniers of the Coming—as in, the notion that Jesus already visited Earth once (rather than will do so only in the concluding future).

It’s possible the author of 1 John only means to defend a specifically sarcicist (rather than pneumatic) resurrection for Jesus—if they are assuming the reader will understand them to be referencing John 20-21. Or they are just borrowing that idea to attack a different opposition. But either way our observation is the same. Many scholars presume that those chapters in John (and their precedent passages in Luke 24) are also anti-Docetic, but they clearly are not, as they concern only the resurrection body. Neither Gospel ports that physicalist rhetoric back into the life of Jesus—no one in them is acting like they doubt or have to prove the physical reality of the Incarnate Jesus, only the nature of his body after the Incarnation (when that body was dead and he was resurrected). No one is asked to touch him to confirm he is real before his resurrection.

On the actual targets of these Gospel passages (and the corresponding distinction between “sarcicist” and “pneumatic” resurrection—both of which a bodily resurrection, by the way, just differing over that body’s nature) see my discussion in “The Spiritual Body” in The Empty Tomb and related discussions in Dale Martin’s The Corinthian Body and Caroline Bynum’s The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity. If 1 John was written with the same target in mind, then we can’t say it was attacking mythicist Christians (those who denied Christ came to Earth already), but rather deniers of the resurrection of the flesh (those who instead insisted, like Paul, that in the resurrection the corpseflesh would be abandoned and new, supernatural bodies provided). But even then the target is still not Docetists. There is nothing about Docetism going on here, in any ancient or modern sense.

Even at best, we must say there is no clear reference in the New Testament to anyone denying either the Incarnation or Resurrection of Jesus. So we need some other evidence to arrive at such a conclusion. Without that, if all we had were these texts, we’d have nothing but impenetrable ambiguity—or a rather different conclusion. All these passages attacking “myth-talking” Christians never actually say they deny the Death or Resurrection of Jesus, nor would it make very much sense to—it’s hard to imagine a Christian who didn’t preach the atoning death of Jesus, and death entails incarnation: existing in the flesh (whether pre-existing otherwise or not). More to the point, none of these passages mentions that (denying the resurrection or atoning death) being the actual problem. So we have no basis for assuming any kind of Docetism is what the author of 1 John is talking about, much less any of the other passages.

So—on what basis of evidence might we have any such basis?

The Invention of Docetism

There have been grumblings of late. In an essay he contributed to Re-Making the World: Christianity and Categories: Essays in Honor of Karen L. King (ed. Taylor Petrey: Mohr Siebeck 2019), Christopher Hoklotubbe admits the term is problematic and attempts his own solutions (see “What is Docetism?”). Such doubts have been growing for a while (e.g. see “The Gospel of Peter: Docetism Reconsidered” by Jerry McCant, in New Testament Studies 30.2, 1984; and “On the Christology of the Gospel of Peter” by P. M. Head, in Vigiliae Christianae 46.3, 1992; cf. a similar 2018 analysis by Heike Omerzu). But they’ve been coming to a head. I haven’t gotten full access to it yet, but a look at the contents, abstracts, and reviews indicate there is some doubt arising as to the modern construct of Docetism in the most complete and recent study of it in Docetism in the Early Church: The Quest for an Elusive Phenomenon (multiple editors and contributors, Mohr Siebeck 2018).

Step one of any study resolving this question is getting a library copy of that book and reading through it, and then any of its referenced sources and scholarship pertinent. I would then complete database searches for the most recent or on-point articles and books in Google Scholar, JSTOR, the L’Année Philologique, and the ATLA Religion databases, and do the same with them. All until I could pull together some definite conclusions, much of which requiring my being able to confirm I haven’t overlooked anything (whether arguments or evidence). But already I can confirm the latest view building among Docetism experts is getting closer to mine: that it is a modern construct, the term has long since stopped referencing anything ancient authors were actually referring to with it, and the disparate texts we are now arbitrarily and anachronistically piling under that label don’t really reflect any unified position anyone in antiquity could have been talking about.

This is not all the way there. I think we may have to go further. The sect referred to by the term Docetae in antiquity did not deny the Incarnation at all (or the Resurrection). And no such sect was ever even designated until the third century—a very long time after the first century, whole lifetimes in fact after those texts we just examined from the Bible (indeed even after most texts alleged to be Docetic, examined below). Which makes projecting that sect back into the first century a problematic assumption.

This is how the modern construct of Docetism has been used to link together very different texts that really have dubious connections, and so we get the “invention” of the idea that the Docetae “means” the targets of New Testament texts like 1 John or even post-testament texts like Ignatius—when in fact no one, not even Serapion, Clement, or Hippolytus (the only authors to name such a sect), ever made any such connection themselves, and there is no strong connection even to be made. In fact, what is defined under that term appears nowhere in such texts as 1 John and Ignatius, and what 1 John and Ignatius do attack is found nowhere under that term. I think we’ve been chasing a phantom. The field has been misinterpreting all this evidence. All because of a faulty assumption, and a modern scholarly construct being substituted for reality. Just as happened with “Gnosticism.”

How This Works

The backstory of how Gnosticism got fabricated by modern scholars is told in the Westar report. I don’t think it was deliberate. I think it was just a groupthink mistake scholars made (as often they do in this field, but even in others) and then it got locked-in as unquestionable. Like Q and Oral Tradition…and I think Docetism as well. It was hard to get out of those ruts. Any emperor’s-clothes realization would be circularly browbeaten down by cries of “consensus.” Circular reasoning, of course. If the consensus is based on an error (as it was in those other cases), simply citing “the consensus” in defense of that error is an obvious fallacy. No consensus is worth anything that is invulnerable to challenge—if it cannot change in the light of evidence, it was never based on evidence to begin with (see On Evaluating Arguments from Consensus). Just as happened with Gnosticism: in reality no such concept existed in antiquity, and it appears in translations by presumption. Basically, it’s a mistranslation, coupled with a fanciful theory sloppily assembled.

But didn’t the sects we call Gnostic exist? And didn’t they have in common some of the things we call Gnostic? Sure. But that’s meaningless. You can think of it like this: modern scholars theorize “Gnostic means ABCD,” then treat their theory as a fact (despite never having established it by any sound evidence-based reasoning), and then go around saying, “This guy over here says A and B; therefore he believed C and D,” when in reality that inference is never true. It was fabricated by modern scholars making leaps and assumptions. We actually can’t assume anyone who said A and B believed also C and D. They often didn’t. So the organizing concept of Gnosticism leads to error, not sound results. Because the unity of ABCD didn’t exist, or if it did, it existed in only one sect, and thus either way it never designated any real ancient phenomenon. That which predicts nothing is of no use. The same error keeps happening the other way around too: “If another guy says A and B and says he doesn’t believe C and D, then he must have meant different things by A and B” is equally invalid, yet routinely inferred.

For example, Gnostics are supposed to believe some sort of secret spiritual knowledge, literally gnosis, is important to salvation. That’s the very thing the name is even constructed from. Yet all sects—all of them—from which we have enough information to test this proposition believed in this. Every sect, even the most stalwartly “canonical” or “orthodox,” believed in some sort of secret spiritual knowledge they called gnosis. And they all considered it essential to salvation in some way. It was usually imparted to initiates at their baptism, though there were higher levels of it reserved for higher ranking members. We find this in every author who discusses the matter, from Paul to Clement of Alexandria (see OHJ, Ch. 4, Element 13). Since we cannot rule that out in authors who don’t discuss it, we have no evidence of any such distinction ever existing among Christian sects. It simply is a phantom of modern scholastic thought.

Hence what scholars don’t realize is that gnostikos, the word usually translated “Gnostic” in ancient authors, actually just means “one who claims to know,” or in other words, “one who claims to know better.” Which always describes the person using the word as much as the opponents they use it of. They just disagree on which of them actually knows correctly. There was no actual body of beliefs attached to that word. It just meant anyone you disagreed with. It thus designated no distinct sectarian beliefs at all, much less what modern scholars took it to mean. It didn’t even mean “they believe in gnosis and we don’t.” Both believed in gnosis. They just disagreed as to whose gnosis was the real gnosis. Thus we get A. But cannot infer B, C, or D. Nor can we infer A means “something else” when someone affirms A but denies B, C, and D. There is simply no basis for these inferences. They are false.

For example, if we think Irenaeus titled a book “On the Detection and Overthrow of the Gnostics,” that would be a mistranslation, based on presuming he means what modern scholars mean by “Gnostics.” He doesn’t (as a survey of his use of the word and the volumes it appears in makes clear). That heading would better be translated simply as “On the Detection and Overthrow of False Knowledge.” It’s about heretics in general, meaning everyone Irenaeus disagrees with, all people who “claim to know.” And in fact (as we’ll soon see) that is the actual translation. His Greek is no more specific than that. Hence when Irenaeus says “Valentinus adapted the principles” to his own thought of “the so-called ‘Gnostic’ heresy” (ἀπὸ τῆς λεγομένης γνωστικῆς αἱρέσεως), he did not actually mean what modern translations say. Rather, he simply meant “the heresy called ‘knowing’,” as in, any heresy based on false knowledge, rather than true knowledge (as Irenaeus saw it).

What Irenaeus is accusing Valentinus of is knowing things, secret things about the cosmos, that are false. He is not saying anyone claiming to know secret things about the cosmos is a heretic. Irenaeus himself believed he knew secret things about the cosmos too—they were just different things than Valentinus. That in fact is his point. The gnosis Valentinus claimed to have was wrong—only orthodox gnosis was correct, as Irenaeus frequently asserts. Hence as the entire book is actually titled: ΕΛΕΓΧΟΥ ΚΑΙ ΑΝΑΤΡΟΠΗΣ ΤΗΣ ΨΕΥΔΩΝΥΜΟΥ ΓΝΩΣΕΩΣ, “Refuting and Overthrowing False Knowledge” (the last two words pseudônymos and gnôsis), not “the Gnostics” (that phrase is not in the title). The word “gnosis” thereafter is then simply shorthand for this: false knowledge. And as this title of his entire five-volume treatise makes clear, this in fact refers to all his opponents, not any particular array of them. It designates no set of beliefs at all. It simply means people I disagree with.

I pointed out how this same revelation could affect our understanding of Docetism before in The Docetism Analogy. But this article will expand that into a fuller (and updated) discussion. The analogy to Gnosticism is that what the modern term Docetism designates—deniers of the Incarnation and Resurrection, affirmers that Jesus only “seemed” to live and die but didn’t really—also did not exist. No such beliefs existed. No one was even falsely attacked for believing it. At least not systematically. But, unlike Gnosticism, by the third century there was a sect called the Docetae that actually designated a specific belief system—the term did refer to a set of particular doctrines. They just aren’t the doctrines the modern term refers to. And other authors who have had that term applied to them by modern scholars weren’t talking about that sect. The word thus is completely disconnected from any ancient phenomenon, and is thus an enormous source of error in interpreting ancient texts and disputes.

Example 1: Ignatius

Often the text of Ignatius is presented as evidence of Docetism, but this is always by circular argument: a scholar needs him to be talking about Docetism, so he can’t be talking about something much more alarming (like, say, ancient mythicist Christians); therefore he “is” talking about Docetism; therefore this is evidence for Docetism. But the need for this to be about Docetism is entirely driving the interpretation. That interpretation is not being arrived at independently and then used to make any point. Instead, presumption is simply being regurgitated as fact. But when we look at the text, this doesn’t fly.

I have already covered this in How Did Christianity Switch to a Historical Jesus? (reproduced and expanded in Jesus from Outer Space) and in On the Historicity of Jesus, pp. 318-20, in both of which I quote and analyze what Ignatius actually wrote. In the former I compare the creed as it evolved from Paul to Ignatius and point out what has changed. In Paul, it lacks any historicizing details. But in Ignatius it not only has become littered with them, Ignatius condemns Christians denying them—which means there were Christians denying them. Just as with 2 Peter. In the most explicit example, Ignatius says:

Stop your ears when anyone speaks to you at variance with the Jesus Christ who was descended from David, and came through Mary; who really was born and ate and drank; who really was persecuted under Pontius Pilate; who really was crucified and died in the sight of witnesses in heaven, and on earth, and even under the earth; who really was raised from the dead, too, His Father resurrecting Him, in the same way His Father will resurrect those of us, who believe in Him by Jesus Christ, apart from whom we do not truly have life.

Ignatius, Trallians 9 (c. 110 to 160 AD; vide OHJ, Ch. 8.6)

From my comparison with Paul I concluded:

• Paul said Jesus “came into being from David’s sperm” (genomenou ek spermatos Dauid, Rom. 1:3; see OHJ, Ch. 11.9). Ignatius now insists we have to say Jesus came “from the descendants of David” (ek genous Dauid). Conspicuously, precisely the thing Paul never said. [cf. Empirical Logic and Romans 1:3.]

• Paul said Jesus “came into being from a woman,” and his surrounding argument implies that by this he meant from the woman “Hagar…an allegory” (Gal. 4:4; see OHJ, Ch. 11.9). [cf. Yes, Galatians 4 Is Allegorical.] Ignatius now insists we must say Jesus is “from Mary,” not some generic “woman” in an argument about allegorical women. Notably Paul never mentions a Mary. Not in any creed he attests (see OHJ, Ch. 11.4). So why is her name now important to affirm in the creed?

• In both places Paul said Jesus was “made” (ginomai) not “born” (gennaô), by choosing the same word Paul uses to signal divine manufacture (of Adam and our future resurrection bodies), and never of human birth, in conspicuous contrast to the word Paul does always use of human birth. Ignatius conspicuously reverses the vocabulary, and insists we now must say “born” (gennaô) not “made” (ginomai). Exactly the same way we know Christian scribes tried doctoring the manuscripts of Paul (in both Rom. 1:3 and Gal. 4:4 at the same time, thus proving they were well aware of the problem I’m pointing out: OHJ, p. 580, n. 91; hence though both words can mean birth, Christians were aware Paul’s usage did not). [cf. A Primer on Successful vs. Bogus Methodology: Tim O’Neill Edition]

• Paul said Jesus ate and drank in a vision (1 Cor. 11:23; see OHJ, Ch. 11.7). Ignatius now insists we must say Jesus ate and drank for real. Why is that suddenly important?

• Paul said “the archons of this eon crucified” Jesus (1 Cor. 2:8; see OHJ, pp. 47-48, 321-22, 565-66), language evocative of celestial demonic powers (OHJ, Ch. 5, Element 37), while also saying the Roman authorities never would have (Rom. 13; see OHJ, pp. 565-66). Ignatius now insists we must say Pontius Pilate crucified Jesus, and shun anyone who says otherwise as an agent of the Devil. So who was saying otherwise? Why did the name of the crucifier become important to the creed?

• Paul essentially says there were no earthly witnesses to Jesus before his resurrection (1 Cor. 15:3-8; Rom. 10:14-16; Rom. 16:25-26; see OHJ, scripture index for these, pp. 667-68). Ignatius now says we must say there were [as also in 2 Peter]. Why did that become necessary? Why did that enter the creed? When? How?

Historicists claim Docetism was the threat Ignatius is retooling the creed to combat here. But Ignatius never mentions Docetists. And the only texts we have that show anything like Docetism date a century later, and they don’t say anything like what’s in Ignatius. But Ignatius’s opponents here sure sound a lot like mythicists (OHJ, pp. 317-20), the same ones 2 Peter was forged to rebut (OHJ, p. 351); as also, I suspect, all those other New Testament verses I just surveyed. We certainly can’t show otherwise. So we cannot presume otherwise. We need evidence to say so. And there isn’t any.

When we look at treatises against “Docetists” (as we shall in the concluding part of this article) we find no statement that they deny any of the things Ignatius says his opponents did. So Ignatius is not writing about Docetists in the ancient sense. Nor can he be writing about Docetists in the fabricated modern sense. He does not say his opponents said Jesus only “appeared” to descend from David, be born to Mary, eat and drink, get crucified to death by Pilate, and rise from the dead. He says his opponents denied anyone witnessed these things, implying they must have been something like allegorical myths for cosmic events and truths. And this conclusion is not an assumption. We have evidence: 2 Peter and the other NT passages confirm this was the worry, that there were Christians claiming these stories were just allegories, “cleverly devised myths,” not things that really happened. And yet they did not claim the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection never happened (2 Peter, for example, never accuses them of that). Rather, they claimed no one saw them—which means they must have happened in some distant realm, known only by revelation and secret codes in Scripture.

Again, to get this to be about Docetists in the modern sense requires importing all manner of assumptions not in the text. For some reason “Mary” and “Pilate” had to be in there (elsewhere he repeats the same insistence and includes John the Baptist and Herod the Tetrarch: cf. Smyrnaeans 1-3)—and yet denying that was not Docetist, but more likely mythicist, because someone must have been saying these were allegories for something else, that they weren’t really in the story, as that’s the only reason that they now had to be asserted as actual historical persons involved with Jesus, on pain of shunning and exile. Likewise the birth had to be by filial descent and physical parturition—and yet denying this was not Docetist, but more likely mythicist, because someone must have been saying there was no physical birth and no filial descent, even for the fleshly vessel to be killed. What else could it be then? Likewise, why does Ignatius think the eating and drinking had to be real? Why does that matter?

In other words, why specifically are these the concerns of Ignatius? If the concern was “it wasn’t Jesus” who did these things, then he’d say “Jesus did these things,” not that he “really” did them. And if the concern was “it was an illusion,” then he’d say “this was not an illusion,” not that “there were witnesses,” a retort that would be wholly impotent against a charge of illusion. Ignatius clearly had never heard of the claim that the witnesses were deceived by an illusion. Because he doesn’t argue against it. He simply presumes there being witnesses resolves the dispute. But that then can’t be a dispute over illusions. It could only be a dispute about mythmaking. Exactly as we find in 2 Peter.

Scholars will try to get this to be a reference to Docetists by citing a later line by Ignatius against these opponents. In the Ante-Nice Fathers translation (one commonly relied on in the field; and here I am removing words the ANF even admits are not in the Greek):

But if, as some that are without God, that is, the unbelieving, say, that He only seemed to suffer (they themselves only seeming to exist), then why am I in bonds? Why do I long to be exposed to the wild beasts? Do I therefore die in vain? Am I not then guilty of falsehood against the Lord?

Ignatius, Trallians 10

Here we at least have a connection to the word, the verb dokein, “to seem.” But Ignatius repeats this exact word twice, according to these translators saying something like that Jesus can only seem to suffer if the people claiming this can only seem to exist, but this doesn’t make any coherent sense.

A clue may lie in the fact that the Greek has no plural infinitive, and dokein is given in the infinitive—of indirect discourse. This has a number of esoteric consequences in Greek grammar. First, it means both phrases are things “they say or think” (otherwise there is no explanation for both instances of dokein, “to seem,” being in the infinitive). The first is a thing Ignatius claims they said, that (in this translation) Jesus “seemed to suffer.” The second thing is a thing he is saying they think, that (in this translation) “they themselves seem to exist,” because “to exist” is here in participle, not infinitive, form, “they are dokein” or “given that they are dokein.” The “they themselves” is also in the nominative, not accusative. In Greek that is how you present indirect discourse about the one speaking; it is also how you would represent a side point about the speakers. Either way this must be something, Ignatius is alleging, they contemplatively say about themselves, or that they claim they believe. If this were his opinion about them (the usual assumption being that this is a kind of joke), dokein would not be in the infinitive.

But because there is no plural infinitive, we actually cannot be sure the subject of the first instance is Jesus. It could be them. Modern translators already assume so for the second instance. Why not then assume so in parallel for the first instance? In other words, we can validly translate this statement as: “They say they imagine he suffered, being that they imagine [things]” (or “are imagining” things). Because to think, suppose, imagine is actually the primary meaning of dokein—and indeed, even “frequently in relating a dream or vision.” So Ignatius might be talking about mythicists, who (as 2 Peter says) think the Gospel tales only imaginatively represent (not depict) what happened to Jesus, while the real things were learned through visions; the Gospels therefore aren’t historical records.

Ignatius is being polemical, as all heresy hunters were (and just as 2 Peter is), so he is not being fair to what his opponents actually say and think. But this is just as a polemicist would characterize that. His concluding line is therefore telling: “And so, therefore,” if I follow them, “I give a false account of the Lord.” It looks like his worry is that the stories he believes in, and suffers for, are false. That they were imaginary. Not that they have a different interpretation of import, but that they didn’t happen as told. Since this is just as likely to be what he means, we can’t rule this out. Which means we can’t rule in the Docetist alternative. We would need some evidence leaning toward that. But the evidence so far appears to be stacking against it. It is thus not gaining ground as the correct reading, but losing it. All because we abandoned assumptions, and just asked what the evidence actually is, and what the words can actually mean, sans assumption.

So if we don’t presume Ignatius means “Docetists” but had never heard of that concept (especially as it appears he didn’t) and if we only translated what he wrote directly, and in a way that makes his both uses of the word sensible, we’d sooner choose the primary meaning of that verb: “think, suppose, imagine.” Then we’d render Ignatius as saying “if they say they imagine [or suppose] he suffered, because they imagine [or suppose]” things, or something to that effect (likewise when he repeats essentially the same sentence in Smyrnaeans). He’d then be talking about people who are preaching the Gospel crucifixion narratives (and Baptism and Nativity narratives and everything else) are imaginative, not historical; that they represent something symbolically—or, to put it pejoratively: that they have the gall to claim the Gospels are “cleverly devised myths” (2 Peter 1:16), not historical events as related.

Docetism seems much less likely an interpretation. It makes less sense of Ignatius’s chosen Greek. It makes less sense of his argument. It makes less sense of the specific things he’s worried about. And on the other side of the ledger…there’s nothing. Nothing at all supports the Docetist reading, apart from modern scholarly assumptions.

As I wrote in OHJ (p. 318):

If these Christians were teaching that these things were allegories for what was really a cosmic drama (or that these things were only experienced in allegorical visions, as in the book of Revelation), then Ignatius’s remarks would apply just as well. For example, if these things were presented in revelations that some might doubt (for example, if Paul saw Jesus ‘taking bread and wine’ in a vision and not in real life, as appears to be the case in 1 Cor. 11.23-26: see Chapter 11, §7), this could have been what [these] earliest Docetists were really claiming.

In other words, they weren’t claiming these things didn’t happen at all, but that they didn’t happen as related in the Gospels, and were known to have really happened only in visions and hidden codes in the Bible, which could polemically be accused of being “just imagined,” and thus as only “seeming” to have happened, ergo dokein. This is not how those Christians would describe themselves and their beliefs. But it is how an angry, disingenuous polemicist would. So it would explain everything about Ignatius.

So far we could lean either way. Yes, the trend already seems against rather than for Docetism being meant here, but we can be charitable and call it 50/50 at this point. Either way, we still need more evidence to back the Docetist reading, which ideally means evidence in Ignatius (but we’ve already looked at all that); but failing that, then evidence elsewhere that Docetism as modernly conceived even existed at that time, or correlated at all with anything Ignatius is saying. So…do we have any of that?

Example 2: The Gospel of Peter

Indeed this whole modern folly began from a misreading of a third century letter published by the fourth century historian Eusebius (in History of the Church 6.12.3-6). That letter reads as follows (in a typical modern translation):

For we, brethren, receive both Peter and the other apostles as Christ; but we reject intelligently the writings falsely ascribed to them, knowing that such were not handed down to us. When I visited you I supposed that all of you held the true faith, and as I had not read the Gospel which they put forward under the name of Peter, I said, ‘If this is the only thing which occasions dispute among you, let it be read’. But now having learned, from what has been told me, that their mind was involved in some heresy, I will hasten to come to you again. Therefore, brethren, expect me shortly.

[And] you will learn, brethren, from what has been written to you, that we perceived the nature of the heresy of Marcion, and that, not understanding what he was saying, he contradicted himself. For having obtained this Gospel from others who had studied it diligently, namely, from the successors of those who first used it, whom we call Docetists (for most of their opinions are connected with the teaching of that school ) we have been able to read it through, and we find many things in accordance with the true doctrine of the Savior, but some things added to that doctrine, which we have pointed out for you farther on.

Notice there is nothing here relating to the modern concept of Docetism. Nothing about “seeming” or denying anything about Christ, much less the Incarnation or Resurrection. Surviving fragments of that Gospel of Peter affirm both (as McCant, Head, and Omerzu already noted; see my links to their studies above). Whatever Serapion saw in that Gospel that aligned with what “the Docetists” say (a distinct sect he here does not describe in any way) he says are “additions” to orthodox teaching, not subtractions. He’s simply talking about something else.

Hence modern scholars are wrong to think Serapion is talking about what they mean by “Docetism.” As far as this tells us no such thing existed when he wrote. And certainly no such thing was here meant. Attempts to “spin” this as Docetic because the Gospel supposedly downplays Jesus’s suffering and dying all stretch the evidence beyond logic (as other scholars have noted). The Gospel of John also does these things. Yet no one is claiming that’s a Docetist text—to the contrary, they insist it is anti-Docetic! That is how far this modern folly has gone.

In reality, the Gospel of Peter clearly describes the incarnation, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, and never once questions their reality. Indeed, it embellishes Matthew’s account by having the guards watch angels open and enter the tomb and carry Jesus out alive, and then having the women told by an angel that Jesus has thereby risen from the dead. After watching two men descend and open and enter the tomb, the soldiers “saw three men come out of the tomb, the two of those sustaining the other,” then they saw another man descend back into the tomb, whom the women later meet, and this man (likewise obviously an angel) says to them, “Who are you looking for? Surely not him that was crucified? He is risen and is departed, and if you don’t believe it, look in and see the place where he lay, that he is not here: for he is risen, and is departed back to the place he was sent from.”

So the body that was buried rose from the dead. If his soul left that body at death, it clearly returned to occupy it for its resurrection. This is not only anti-Docetist, if taken literally it is anti-pneumatist as well, going beyond Paul to insist the same body that was buried is the one that rose. From Serapion’s perspective you couldn’t get more orthodox than that. So there is no possible way any of this is what Serapion was objecting to. Since we don’t have the rest of this Gospel, we can’t really say what he might have had a problem with—it could have been teachings it attributed to Jesus during his ministry, which we don’t have. The most he tells us is that it overlapped too far, he thought, with the doctrines of Marcion; but he does not state which doctrines. The quoted section of the letter indicates he did state them, but evidently in a section of the letter Eusebius left out, so we can’t claim to know what they were.

But what we can know for sure is: Serapion is not talking about anything meant by the modern term “Docetism,” and the Gospel of Peter is not in any way Docetist in the modern sense, and that Gospel (maybe in sections we don’t have) only had elements of what Serapion meant by Docetism, but those were clearly unrelated to the modern concept. So, no evidence we can use here. But notice the false modern fabrication of Docetism still drives scholarly interpretations of this text even against all the evidence. It is thus causing fundamental errors in understanding ancient Christianity.

Example 3: The Apocalypse of Peter

As I wrote before (in McGrath on OHJ: A Failure of Logic and Accuracy): Many, including James McGrath, also incorrectly cite the Apocalypse of Peter as evidence of a “double-Jesus” Docetism, involving one Jesus on earth and another in heaven. It does not. There are no such texts at all (not even the Ascension of Isaiah, in any version, says that). The word “apocalypse” means revelation, and accordingly the text makes clear the entire thing is a vision Peter is having, while sitting with Jesus chatting in the temple square before his arrest—it is not being represented as an actual historical event anyone witnessed. It is not an account of the crucifixion, but a purely symbolic scene, such as litters the canonical book of Revelation, or as Peter experiences in Acts 10.

Moreover, the text of this vision says the same person is present in both places: there is not “one” Jesus in heaven and “another” on earth, but the real Jesus is the same person the villains seize and crucify as occupies the fleshly body they drive nails into:

[Jesus says to Peter after Peter’s vision]: Be strong, for you are the one to whom these mysteries have been given, to know them through revelation, that he whom they crucified is the first-born, and the home of demons, and the stony vessel in which they dwell, of Elohim, of the cross, which is under the Law. But he who stands near him is the living Savior, the first in him, whom they seized and released, who stands joyfully looking at those who did him violence, while they are divided among themselves. Therefore he laughs at their lack of perception, knowing that they are born blind. So then the one susceptible to suffering shall come, since the body is the substitute. But what they released was my incorporeal body.

This is not Docetism. It is simply saying the mortal body is worthless offal that Jesus left behind, escaping as an incorporeal soul, which could hover outside its body and laugh at those who think they can harm him by harming his body. This is basically the same thing as the Stoic doctrine of the sage, whose soul is above the body, serene, even as it occupies it, even in the midst of that body being tormented. That’s not Docetism. It’s just Dualism. Otherwise the text makes clear these are not different people: the one crucified is Jesus’s body, occupied by Jesus’s soul until death, only figuratively looking on himself as he dies (like an “out of body experience”).

That Jesus wore a human body to suffer and die in—in other words, the Incarnation, Jesus’ doctrinally necessary (and ritually temporary) humanity—is not being denied here. Nor is the Resurrection. Though that is not mentioned, the text we have is compatible with the soul returning to that body for resurrection as depicted in the Gospel of Peter (which for all we know comes from the same original text, as this all happens before the scene depicted there) or with it entering a new body for the purpose as argued by Paul. So we can’t say what its authors thought about that, as this text simply doesn’t discuss that aspect of their doctrine, one way or the other. Nor did anyone in antiquity link this text to “the Docetists” as a sect as even they understood them.

So, again, no evidence we can use here. But notice the false modern fabrication of Docetism still drives scholarly interpretations of this text even against all the evidence. It is thus causing fundamental errors in understanding ancient Christianity.

Example 4: The Treatise of Seth

Another often cited is the Second Treatise of the Great Seth, which is from the 3rd century, and thus cannot be assumed representative of the century-older sect(s) that, for example, Ignatius or the New Testament were talking about. And no ancient author makes any such connection either. And yet again even that text does not say there were two Jesuses. This is the text that modern scholars think says Simon of Cyrene was crucified on Earth in Jesus’s place. Which of course would be clearly a post-Gospel doctrine, as it simply embellishes ideas and characters invented by the Gospels.

But in fact the text does not say this. Likewise the text claiming Judas was switched for Jesus on the cross is a late medieval forgery. Which means we really don’t have any original document claiming a switcheroo at all (we know of one only by polemical report—from Irenaeus, whom I’ll get to). Because, alas, Seth never says Simon was the one crucified. It only says he bore the cross, which is exactly what all the Synoptic Gospels say (denied only by the Gospel of John). It does speak in the third person of the crucifixion, but only to illustrate what the Apocalypse of Peter did: that the body is only a suit occupied by the soul. This is not denying the Incarnation. It is affirming it. This text even affirms the belief that “we shall die with Christ” (thus it does not deny he died); and says Jesus “visited a bodily dwelling” and “cast out the one who was in it first” and “went in” (in other words, he became incarnate by possessing someone else’s body of flesh), and this is the body that died, the soul escaping upon death to laugh at those who thought they could kill the soul by killing the body it occupied. This text never gets into the subject of resurrection either, so again we cannot say what its author thought about that.

There is a lot that is odd here to be sure. In fact the text never actually says where any of this happened, and seems to repeatedly imply the killers were sky demons, fallen angels, not Romans or Jews. The text even suggests his “kinsfolk” included celestials, rendering even that reference unclear. It is too ambiguous to be sure it means that. But it is also too ambiguous to be sure of the contrary. At the only point where it discusses the Gospel crucifixion narrative, this is all it says:

Those who were there punished me. And I did not die in reality but in appearance, lest I be put to shame by them because these are my kinsfolk. I removed the shame from me and I did not become fainthearted in the face of what happened to me at their hands. I was about to succumb to fear, and I <suffered> according to their sight and thought, in order that they may never find any word to speak about them. For my death, which they think happened, (happened) to them in their error and blindness, since they nailed their man unto their death. For their Ennoias did not see me, for they were deaf and blind. But in doing these things, they condemn themselves. Yes, they saw me; they punished me. [But] it was another, their father, who drank the gall and the vinegar; it was not I. They struck me with the reed; [but] it was another, Simon, who bore the cross on his shoulder. I was another upon whom they placed the crown of thorns. But I was rejoicing in the height over all the wealth of the Archons and the offspring of their error, of their empty glory. And I was laughing at their ignorance.

This appears closely related to the Apocalypse of Peter, and we can infer it is describing the same concepts: body-soul dualism; the body is just a house, an environment suit, a temporary abode; killing it doesn’t kill the person, who is a soul. While terms one can link to Docetism appear here (“I did not die in reality but in appearance”), they do not describe what the modern notion imagines. This is still Jesus becoming incarnate and dying (he “went in” to that body; “my death”; “punished me”; “struck me”; “what happened to me”). But it isn’t a “real” death because souls are immortal—Dualism, not Docetism. It also links to the Ascension of Isaiah in describing a similar version of the Incarnation:

And I subjected all their powers. For as I came downward, no one saw me. For I was altering my shapes, changing from form to form. And therefore, when I was at their gates, I assumed their likeness. For I passed them by quietly, and I was viewing the places, and I was not afraid nor ashamed, for I was undefiled. And I was speaking with them, mingling with them through those who are mine, and trampling on those who are harsh to them with zeal, and quenching the flame. And I was doing all these things because of my desire to accomplish what I desired by the will of the Father above.

And:

After we went forth from our home, and came down to this world, and came into being in the world in bodies, we were hated and persecuted.

He is clearly describing exactly what Paul does in Philippians 2, apart from having the mortal body already available to occupy (by angelic possession), rather than (as Paul describes) it being manufactured for him.

Here at least we have something close to Docetism, but no one then is calling it that, it isn’t what is attacked as that in any of the heresiologists, and it doesn’t track to the modern idea that such doctrines denied Jesus was briefly human or died or rose from the dead. It doesn’t do that any more than any belief in an immortal soul does. And while the text is ambiguous as to who is doing the killing, or where anyone named Simon carried a cross, and so forth, that is of no aid to defenders of the modern idea of Docetism. At worst, it is describing a mythicist Christian belief, that all these things happened at the hands of demonic Archons in the sky. At best, it simply describes the Gospel narratives, and thus is affirming Jesus occupied a mortal body that died, and thus really did all the things claimed of him (he “came into being in the world in bodies” and thus “I assumed their likeness” and “I was speaking with them, mingling with them” and this was “my death,” they “punished me,” they “struck me,” this is “what happened to me”). This cannot be what the New Testament anywhere, or Ignatius in particular, was talking about.

So, again, no evidence we can use here. But notice the false modern fabrication of Docetism still drives scholarly interpretations of this text even against all the evidence. It is thus causing fundamental errors in understanding ancient Christianity.

Example 5: The Ascension of Isaiah

Another text sometimes claimed to be Docetic is the final extant redaction of the Ascension of Isaiah (which I discuss in Ch. 3 of On the Historicity of Jesus). Much though that is claimed about this text is false (for example, see my discussion in M. David Litwa, the Ascension of Isaiah, and the Problem of Incompetent Scholarship), and this is another. Despite what you might hear, there is no celestial crucifixion being copied by an earthly one—whichever version of the text you are looking at, there is only ever one crucifixion in it (and one can only debate where it was located in that recension).

Of course I argue the evidence we have indicates the earliest redaction probably had it occur in the firmament (what we now call the sky or high orbit), at the hands of Satan. But regardless, the interpolated edition firmly places it on Earth, at the hands of an unnamed king, and definitely represents it as real. There is no illusion. No Jesus escaping execution. It also does not deny the Incarnation, but elaborately explains the purpose of it. However weird his birth, the baby Jesus is still a real baby, a flesh-and-blood human being (certainly nowhere in the text is this denied). And it definitely has a Resurrection, and thus Jesus definitely dies. Nevertheless, some scholars still try to push a modern Docetist label on this text (OHJ, pp. 36-37 n. 1) by claiming that because the final interpolated redaction has the Incarnate baby Jesus miraculously teleport out of Mary’s womb (so as to avoid the ignominy of touching a vagina), this therefore must somehow be Docetism. It isn’t. It is simply “unorthodox” and thus just another “heresy” (to most Christian minds).

Usually this poor attempt to bootstrap Docetism into this text is done not by any empirical logic, but by motivated reasoning: the need to explain why the “pocket gospel” (the whole strange summary of Jesus’s birth, life, and death inserted into an otherwise very differently-styled-and-composed text) was deleted (if it wasn’t added) from whatever edition that ended up translated into the Latin and Slavonic. But this maneuver doesn’t even make internal sense. An anti-Docetist would simply have fixed it, not deleted the whole gospel (e.g. if the teleporting birth offended them, they’d just cut that line, or replace it with an orthodox birth—exactly the way we see other sections of the text were edited: e.g., OHJ, p. 42), whereas in fact what the whole pocket gospel got replaced with in the manuscripts lacking it is even more Docetic than what was removed (affirming that Jesus only appeared “like” a man), completely contradicting the logic of this explanation. And yet even that is not Docetic—it simply repeats what Paul had already canonically said. So you have to assume it was Docetic to get it to be. But if you believe, instead, in evidence-based reasoning, there simply is no evidence that this was in any sense Docetic.

So, again, no evidence we can use here. But notice the false modern fabrication of Docetism still drives scholarly interpretations of this text even against all the evidence. It is thus causing fundamental errors in understanding ancient Christianity.

Example 6: Irenaeus

Though switcheroos aren’t really Docetic in the modern sense, they do get pushed under that banner. This is really a distraction. There is no way this is what Ignatius or any of the texts in the NT could be talking about, nor any other text we’ve examined, nor is it what any ancient heresiologist attributed to the sect they called the Docetists. But nevertheless, we should give it a notice before moving on.

As I noted, in reality no ancient text itself contains a switcheroo story. We only hear of one indirectly from Irenaeus, who claims this was taught by the second-century “heretic” Basilides. But no other author writing about Basilides repeats this claim independently of Irenaeus, Christian heresiologies are notoriously untrustworthy in their accounts of opponents, and what Irenaeus says sounds more like he is actually riffing off the Treatise of Seth and the Apocalypse of Peter, which we just examined and found said no such thing. Just as when he complains that Basilides taught that “salvation belongs to the soul alone, for the body is by nature subject to corruption,” which could easily be a polemical misrepresentation of what was actually no different than the pneumatist teaching of Paul (discussed above).

So we can’t really be so sure anyone actually taught this. But at least Basilides was accused of teaching it, which is closer than we usually get. Although even this might be suspect—this passage in Irenaeus is extant only in a Latin translation known for medieval interpolations—we do find it paraphrased in the fifth century by Epiphanius, so the idea probably existed at least by then, falsely imputed to Basilides or not. In any event, this is what the passage in Irenaeus says:

[Jesus] appeared, then, on earth as a man, to the nations of these powers, and wrought miracles. Wherefore he did not himself suffer, but Simon, a certain man of Cyrene, being compelled, bore the cross in his stead; so that this latter being transfigured by him, that he might be thought to be Jesus, was crucified, through ignorance and error, while Jesus himself received the form of Simon, and, standing by, laughed at them. For since he was an incorporeal power, and the Nous (mind) of the unborn father, he transfigured himself as he pleased, and thus ascended to him who had sent him, deriding them, inasmuch as he could not be laid hold of, and was invisible to all. Those, then, who know these things have been freed from the principalities who formed the world; so that it is not incumbent on us to confess him who was crucified, but him who came in the form of a man, and was thought to be crucified, and was called Jesus

Irenaeus, Against All Heresies 1.24.4

Basilides then supposedly taught that other Christians, who kept affirming it was Jesus and not Simon crucified, were thereby instead damned rather than saved. Let’s assume this is what Basilides taught. Even though Hippolytus and Clement of Alexandria never heard of it, yet wrote at length against his teachings, perhaps this was a “secret” teaching of Basilides known only to a few. Whatever. Grant it. Here we would at least have a switcheroo, where Jesus “seems” to be crucified but literally isn’t, because someone else was mistaken for him. And we can describe this under the modern Docetist sense, as plausibly this meant the Resurrection and Incarnation were indeed being denied, as Jesus just flies back into space unharmed. But this still isn’t what was described then as Docetism; and none of the other texts we’ve looked at connect with this at all.

So what we have here is simply the doctrine of Basilides—we might call it “Basilidinism”—not an example of some “sectarian trend” to warrant its own label. Ignatius, and the authors of the canonical Johannine literature (Gospel and Epistles), weren’t complaining about anyone saying Jesus skipped out on the crucifixion and flew back to heaven instead. No other Christian author claimed any such thing either, nor did anyone else complain that any were. So, like Gnosticism, where much of what gets crammed under that title is actually just Marcionism and so should simply be called Marcionism, this teaching of Basilides warrants no such label as Docetism. It should simply be defined as the Basilidene heresy. It’s just one guy and his sect’s doctrine; not a genre of doctrines shared across sects. Nor can this serve any use in interpreting any other text alleged to be Docetic, as we’ve seen.

There are a few other passages in Irenaeus that get misrepresented as referencing Docetism. For example, in his account of the Simonian heresy, Irenaeus claims Simon Magus was purporting to be the real Son of God descended from beyond, appearing “like” a man, and believed to have “suffered” in Judea but didn’t really (Against Heresies 1.23). But this isn’t Jesus. There is no crucifixion or resurrection because this isn’t Jesus. So whether we conceive of what Simon was allegedly claiming for himself as an Incarnation or not doesn’t matter; this isn’t a claim being made about Jesus. It’s just a huckster competing with Christianity with his own eclectic sectarian contrivances.

Likewise, Irenaeus says Saturninus taught “the savior was without birth, without body, and without figure, but was, by supposition, a visible man,” but this is vague as to what Saturninus actually taught. Many a Christian believed the Logos was “without birth, body, or figure” and later became “in appearance a man.” So it is unclear that Saturninus even taught differently (Ibid. 1.24.2). Likewise other discussions in Irenaeus, where it is not at all clear he is even talking about heretical opinions on the Incarnation, rather than the cosmology of Jesus pre-Incarnation (e.g. Ibid. 1.12). Only by importing Docetic assumptions not in the text can we get to any other conclusion.

So, again, no evidence we can use here. But notice the false modern fabrication of Docetism still drives scholarly interpretations of these texts even against all the evidence. It is thus causing fundamental errors in understanding ancient Christianity.

Example 7: Tertullian

Tertullian accuses Marcion of advancing what is now called Docetism, but never calls it Docetism, nor links the notion with any other sect. We can also doubt the honesty and reliability of Tertullian on this point (he’s a particularly dubious narrator of his opponents’ views), but here we can at least say the accusation existed. But just as with Gnosticism, this appears to simply be Marcionism, not a subset of some grander trend. It thus warrants no special term. Just as with the switcherooism of Basilides. But more even than that, it is not clear that what Marcion was actually teaching was a denial of the humanity, Incarnation, death, or Resurrection of Jesus.

Marcion’s preferred Gospel, even modified, was in fact anti-Docetic—not only emphasizing the death and Resurrection (and thus Incarnation), but that the risen Jesus was not a phantom. So when Tertullian elaborately accuses Marcion of “alleging Christ to be a phantom” (Against Marcion 3.8) we have good cause to doubt Tertullian is telling us the truth. Indeed, in this and the next volume of his same polemical attack (Ibid. 4) it really looks like Tertullian is inventing this belief and attributing it to Marcion, through a convoluted bad-faith inference from what Marcion otherwise did teach (that the flesh is inferior and ultimately to be discarded; a teaching identical to Paul’s). Indeed at no point does Tertullian ever quote Marcion saying any of the things Tertullian attributes to him—despite supposedly describing doctrines he had written. (Both facts are also observed in Tertullian’s treatise On the Flesh of Christ.)

So on both accounts—that Tertullian is simply describing Marcionism, not Docetism, and is probably not even being honest about it—there is no evidence we can use here. But notice the false modern fabrication of Docetism still drives scholarly interpretations of these texts even against all the evidence. It is thus causing fundamental errors in understanding ancient Christianity.

Example 8: Clement of Alexandria

After Serapion the first time we hear of any sect called “the Docetists” is in the 3rd century works of Clement and Hippolytus (whom I’ll survey next). Clement tells us:

Of the heresies, some receive their appellation from a name, as that which is called after Valentinus, and that after Marcion, and that after Basilides, although they boast of adducing the opinion of Matthew … Some take their designation from a place, as the Peratici; some from a nation, as that of the Phrygians; some from an action, as that of the Encratites; and some from peculiar dogmas, as that of the Docetae, and that of the Haermatites; and some from suppositions, and from individuals they have honored, as those called Cainists and the Ophians; and some from nefarious practices and enormities, as those of the Simonians called Entychites.

Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 7.17

Clement never really gets much into what he thinks the “peculiar doctrines” are that define the Docetists as a sect. But already he distinguishes it from Marcionism and Basilidinism and Valentinianism—so he is not including their teachings as Docetic. As we’ve seen so far, this is a serious problem for the modern conception. Worse, the only time Clement says anything as to what distinguishes the Docetists, it’s nothing to do with the modern conception at all, or any of the ancient texts we’ve surveyed as supposedly referring to Docetism either. Clement says (Ibid. 3.13, English / Latin / Greek): Τοιούτοις ἐπιχειρεῖ καὶ ὁ τῆς δοκήσεως ἐξάρχων Ἰούλιος Κασσιανός / talibus argumentis utitur quoque Julius Cassianus, qui fixit princeps sectae Docetarum / “Such arguments are also employed by Julius Casinos, who first created (the sect of) the Docetists.” What arguments? Those concerning solely gender and sexuality. Such as Cassianus’s warning to “let no one say that because we have these parts, that the female body is shaped this way and the male that way, the one to receive, the other to give seed, therefore sexual intercourse is allowed by God.” In other words, we should not infer function from appearance. The term “Docetist” is here intended in a completely unrelated sense to anything modernly conceived or referenced in any of the texts we’ve discussed.

Earlier (Ibid. 3.17) Clement put Marcion et al. under the same umbrella as Cassian only in respect to the Pauline view that the flesh is psychic and the risen body pneumatic. He otherwise distinguishes them when he says that by declaring birth an evil, hinc Docesin fingit Cassianus; hinc etiam Marcioni et Valentino quoque est corpus animale, “on this Cassian formed the Docetists; and on this Marcion and Valentinus also [formulated that] the flesh is an animal.” Here Clement is saying the Docetist doctrine is wholly different from Marcionism and Valentinism, and that they share only the view that birth is an evil; and he is saying that the entire distinctive notion of Docetism was constructed on this view—a view about sex and reproduction. Which could at least generate something like the idea that the baby Jesus had to teleport out of a womb lest he touch a vagina, and that would render the Ascension of Isaiah a Docetist text indeed—in the ancient sense, which has nothing whatever to do with the modern sense!

And yet we are not told here that the Docetists denied the birth of Jesus (or his being given a body of flesh without a birth, which is still an Incarnation), only that they held to what we would today call the corruption of the flesh (a.k.a. Original Sin), which is compatible with the Incarnation—in all the ways it has indeed been made so even by orthodox Christians (for example, the Immaculate Conception was invented by Catholics to solve this problem; Protestants solved it by appealing to divine grace). Clement implies the Docetists may have solved the problem in a manner similar to modern Protestants, if their approach resembled that of the Valentinians he pairs them with, who said that though Jesus had flesh, it was in some fashion miraculously bestowed by God to work differently, even processing food differently to ensure Jesus never had to take a shit (and on this point Clement provides, indeed, a direct quote from Valentinus to that very effect: Ibid. 3.7). Otherwise, Clement says Cassian interpreted bodies to be just suits that people wear (and wear in their fallen state), citing an allegorical reading of Genesis 3.21 (Ibid. 3.14), and thus not indicative of our real nature (and thus inferences about whether sex is cool cannot be drawn therefrom). But this entails nothing as to the Incarnation. It looks more related to a pneumatist resurrection doctrine adapted from Paul’s, wherein we will not have sexual organs or desire sex at all (much less have it) in our future resurrection bodies.

So, again, no evidence we can use here. But notice the false modern fabrication of Docetism still drives scholarly interpretations of these texts even against all the evidence. It is thus causing fundamental errors in understanding ancient Christianity. Indeed, it has so confounded modern scholars that they don’t even notice Clement is saying the Docetists were so-called because of their dogmas about sex, and not anything to do with denying Jesus wore a body of flesh or claiming he only pretended to.

Example 9: Hippolytus

Last but not least is Hippolytus, who tells us the most of any ancient author about the Docetists as a sect, in the eighth volume of his work The Refutation of All Heresies. Introduced at the end of his seventh volume with the line, “let us see what also has been invented by the Docetae,” he then elaborates in the introduction of his eighth: “Having adequately and sufficiently explained the doctrines of the majority” of heretical sects (including Marcionism and others, so again he is distinguishing Docetists from the Marcionites, not equating them) “in the seven books before this, we shall not now be silent as regards the opinions that follow,” and thus “shall refute those” who suppose “that they have acquired” a purported “steadfastness of doctrine, when it is only in appearance,” and “these have styled themselves Docetae, and propound the following opinions.” He then relates a long variety of doctrines. None of which relate to the modern conception. In fact, they exclude it. As he says:

In order, therefore, say the Docetae, that [Jesus] may be clad in the darkness that is prevalent in more distant quarters of creation [a marginal gloss or correction here says “they say flesh”], an angel journeyed with Him from above, and announced the glad tidings to Mary, says (the Docetic), as it has been written. And the (child) from her was born, as it has been written. And He who came from above put on that which was born; and so did He all things, as it has been written (of Him) in the Gospels. He washed in Jordan, … was baptized … the Ruler condemned his own peculiar figment (of flesh) to a death of the cross … (etc.)

Hippolytus, Refutation 8.3 (cf. the original language)

He goes on to describe a variant of Paul’s pneumatic two-body resurrection theory, whereupon “that soul which had been nourished in the body (born of the Virgin)” and then “stripped off that body and nailed it to the (accursed) tree,” and in that way “triumphed by means of this (discarded body) over principalities and powers,” but he “would not be found naked, but would, instead of that flesh, assume the (other) body, which had been represented” to him at his baptism. This is just a version of Pauline Incarnationism. Not Docetism in the modern sense. For Jesus really did come down, really did wear a real body of flesh, really did die in it, and really did rise from the dead, in a newer supernatural body. This cannot have any connection, then, to what Ignatius was concerned with, or any of the New Testament texts, and if it had any connection to what Serapion was concerned with, it wasn’t in any sense captured by the modern conception of Docetism.

Hippolytus never mentions the sex doctrines Clement regarded as fundamental to their name, but does cross into that area by mentioning they regarded the body of flesh as a discardable environment suit, and thus not fundamental to Christ’s nature, but just a tool he used to accomplish his ends. And the common thread we find in Clement and Hippolytus is that “how things seem” cannot dictate “how things are” (hence that a penis fits into a vagina cannot dictate that sex was intended by God and therefore good), and the play on words throughout Hippolytus’s closing summary of what defines Docetism as a sect plays on the idea of “seeming” and “supposing” repeatedly enough to suggest this is, indeed, why the adherents of this sect took that name for themselves (recall, these are the two senses of the underlying verb dokein).

As Hippolytus explains:

Each [Christian, they say] is so constituted as to discern Jesus, who is of a nature (similar to their own). (And it was the nature of this Jesus) which that only-begotten and eternal One assumed from everlasting places. These (places), however, are diverse. Consequently, a proportionate number of heresies, with the utmost emulation, seek Jesus. But all these heresies have their own peculiar Jesus; so he is seen differently according as the place is different towards which, he says, each soul is borne and hastens. (Now each soul) supposes [dokousa, a participle of dokein] that (the Jesus seen from its particular place) is alone that (Jesus) who is its own peculiar kinsman and fellow-citizen. And on first beholding (this Jesus, that soul) recognises Him as its own peculiar brother, but the rest as bastards. Those, then, that derive their nature from the places below, are not able to see the forms of the Saviour which are above them. Those, however, he says, who are from above, from the intermediate decade and the most excellent ogdoad — whence, say (the Docetae), we are — have themselves known not in part, but entirely, Jesus the Saviour. And those, who are from above, are alone perfect, but all the rest are only partially so.

Ibid.

The Docetists thus called themselves that because their entire salvific system hinged on distinguishing what seems to be the case from what you can correctly imagine or suppose to be the case. Those who become obsessed with a literal Jesus of flesh—and this would mean sarcicists, like Tertullian, who insist (per Caroline Bynum’s Resurrection of the Body) that Jesus rose in the same body of flesh that died, so sexual organs could be preserved and thus gender hierarchy maintained in the afterlife—are those most confused, obsessed with how things seem rather than how they really are. Those who realize Jesus now lives in a superior body different from the body of flesh, and who see through even that to his true spiritual nature, are the perfected and thus the most blessed.

Nowhere in this is there a denial of the humanity, Incarnation, death, or Resurrection of Jesus. Nowhere is Jesus “not really” eating and drinking and being born and beaten and killed when he was on Earth. As Hippolytus plainly says, the Docetists admit “that all the occurrences took place with Him as it has been written in the Gospels.” This simply has nothing to do with the modern notion of Docetism, or any text alleged to be Docetic by that conception—only, at best, in this original conception, which is not Illusionism, but Paulinism, a doctrine really only about the resurrection body, not the body Jesus once lived and died in. Hence as Hippolytus goes on to explain, it is the resurrection body that Jesus assumes that “could not be seen by any, on account of the excessive magnitude of his glory,” other than by the eye of faith, and hence only to believers (a notion found likewise in Origen).

So, again, no evidence we can use here. But notice the false modern fabrication of Docetism still drives scholarly interpretations of this text even against all the evidence. It is thus causing fundamental errors in understanding ancient Christianity. Indeed, it has so confounded modern scholars that they don’t even notice Hippolytus is saying the Docetists were so-called because of their dogmas about perceiving the risen Jesus and thus (per Clement) what this informs us about the role of sex organs in our mortal bodies. No Illusionism. No anti-Incarnationism.

Conclusion

Supposedly:

In the history of Christianity, docetism (from the Koinē Greek: δοκεῖν/δόκησις dokeĩn “to seem”, dókēsis “apparition, phantom”) is the heterodox doctrine that the phenomenon of Jesus, his historical and bodily existence, and above all the human form of Jesus, was mere semblance without any true reality. Broadly it is taken as the belief that Jesus only seemed to be human, and that his human form was an illusion.

We have surveyed all the ancient evidence. Not once did we find any such doctrine. The closest we came was Tertullian’s account of Marcionism—which is wholly untrustworthy. He never cites any evidence Marcion ever taught anything Tertullian claims, and gives in place of evidence only his own bad-faith inferences (e.g., Marcion omitted a Nativity “therefore” he “must” have denied the flesh of Jesus, and other like fallacious polemicizing). And in any event, that’s simply an account of Marcionism. Not “Docetism.” And none of the other texts accredited as referring to Docetism can be talking about this anyway—for example, Marcion, even by Tertullian’s dubious account, never claimed Jesus didn’t eat or drink or that he evaded being crucified by Pilate or that he wasn’t witnessed doing these things, so Ignatius cannot have been speaking of any such doctrine as Marcion’s. (Likewise the completely unrelated, and just as dubiously alleged, teaching of Basilides that Jesus skipped out on everything.)

Just as supposedly:

The word Δοκηταί Dokētaí (“Illusionists”), referring to early groups who denied Jesus’s humanity, first occurred in a letter by Bishop Serapion of Antioch (197–203), who discovered the doctrine in the Gospel of Peter, during a pastoral visit to a Christian community using it in Rhosus, and later condemned it as a forgery,” and, “It appears to have arisen over theological contentions concerning the meaning, figurative or literal, of a sentence from the Gospel of John: “the Word was made Flesh.”

We have surveyed all the ancient evidence. Not once did we find any such notions. Not a single instance clearly relates any such belief to this passage in John. And Serapion wasn’t talking about any such belief. And no such belief exists in the Gospel of Peter. While we find some heresiologists complaining about something vaguely like denying the flesh or humanity of Jesus, in no actual text do we find any such belief affirmed, and in the evidence the heresiologists present appears instead to have actually referenced the Pauline pneumatist doctrine that the flesh (and thus humanity) of Jesus was only a petty environment suit on temporary loan, discarded after use—and not that he never wore it. And they never call this Docetism anyway. When we read their accounts of whom they do call “the Docetists,” we find a completely unrelated belief system, which they never connect to any of these others.

This is why I suspect there was no such thing. The modern concept of Docetism, like Gnosticism, is an erroneous modern fabrication, which has misled scholars into considerable mistakes in interpreting the real history of early Christianity. And once we abandon it, as no longer uniting the array of texts alleged, and then re-examine those texts on their own terms, without these faulty imported assumptions, we find very different conclusions emerge—among them, that this fabricated concept has hidden from modern scholars a realization that some of the earliest texts we have, biblical and extra-biblical, were written in confrontation with Christians claiming the Gospels were myths, not histories, evidently relating deeper truths and realities allegorically, that no one met Jesus when he was alive, that all was known only by revelation and scripture.

I am not certain of this. I have not completed the study of Docetism I would need to in order to be. But on my preliminary study so far, this certainly looks to be the case.