After some reading I am unsure except to note it is possible that both these polemics may have been developed at more or less the same time period. And that this time period may be hypothetically extended over many centuries with an upper bound given by the earliest extant mss. My studies on the "heretics" branch out on a key field which is not the names of the heretics or heretical groups. This fundamental key field are the manuscripts from which the texts of the heretics are derived. We can be sure about the existence of the texts say for example within the NHL. We cannot have the same type of certainty about so-called historical figures such as Valentinus or Simon Magus or Marcion,Do you think that the polemic against Marcion is older or younger than the polemic against Mani?
Reading back through my notes it becomes clear that the writings of the heresiologists about Mani (which until the 20th century were accepted as integrous (or at least the only info we had). But after the discovery of Manichaean texts themselves these heresiological accounts were generally discarded as highly spurious accounts, filled with spiteful rhetoric, with little or no historical foundations.
The treatment of Marcion is IMHO of a similar ilk. One could almost summarise the rhetoric as a crowing of the victors in their retrospective accounts of their struggle for orthodoxy over whatever or whoever they deemed to be the heretics. Marcion is presented as a different type of heretic who at least recognised that there was a canon of books in contrast to the other heretics who wrote their own accounts (such as we find in the NHL and the NTA)
Statistics: Posted by Leucius Charinus — Thu Jan 23, 2025 5:39 pm