page_title: Heracleon
section_title: Exposition
hierarchical_section_title: Heracleon / Commentary / Exposition
caption_attribution_description: Photina, Samaritan woman, meets Jesus (Orthodox icon).
context_page_description: Heracleon was a Gnostic who flourished about AD 175, probably in the south of Italy. He is described by Clement of Alexandria as the most esteemed
  of the school of Valentinus; and, according to Origen, said to have been in personal contact
  with Valentinus himself. He is barely mentioned by Irenaeus and by Tertullian
  . The common source of Philaster and Pseudo-Tertullian
  contained
  an article on Heracleon between those on Ptolemaeus and Secundus, and on Marcus
  and Colarbasus.
  In his system he appears to have regarded the divine nature as a vast abyss in whose Pleroma were Aeons of different orders and degrees, emanations from the source of being. Midway between the supreme God and the material world was the Demiourgos, who created the latter, and under whose jurisdiction the lower, animal soul of man proceeded after death, while his higher, celestial soul returned to the Pleroma whence at first it issued.
  He seems to have received the ordinary Christian scriptures; and Origen, who treats him as a notable exegete, has preserved fragments of a commentary by him on the fourth gospel, while Clement of Alexandria quotes from him what appears to be a passage from a commentary on Luke.
context_section_description: In this exposition every word in the sacred text assumes 
  significance; and this characteristic runs equally through the fragments of Heracleon's 
  commentary on St. John, whether the words commented on be Jesus's own or only 
  those of the Evangelist. Thus he calls attention to the facts that in the statement 
  "all things were made by Him," the preposition used is
  διά; that Jesus is said to have gone down 
  to Capernaum and gone up to Jerusalem; that He found the buyers and sellers
  ἐν τῷ ἱερῷ, not
  ἐν τῷ ναῷ; that He said salvation is of 
  the Jews not in them, and again (John 4:40) that Jesus tarried with 
  the Samaritans, not in them; notice is taken of the point in Jesus's discourse 
  with the woman of Samaria, where He first emphasizes His assertion with "Woman, 
  believe Me"; and though Origen occasionally accuses Heracleon of deficient accuracy, 
  for instance in taking the prophet (John 1:21) as meaning no more than a prophet; 
  "in three days" (John 2:19) as meaning no more than "on the third day"; yet on the 
  whole Heracleon's examination of the words is exceedingly minute. He attempts to 
  reconcile differences between the Evangelists, e.g. Jesus's ascription 
  to the Baptist of the titles "Elias" and "prophet" with John's own disclaimer of 
  these titles. He finds mysteries in the numbers in the narrative—in the 46 years 
  which the temple was in building, the 6 husbands of the woman of Samaria (for such 
  was his reading), the 2 days Jesus abode with the people of the city, the 7th 
  hour at which the nobleman's son was healed. 
  He thinks it necessary to reconcile 
  his own doctrine with that of the sacred writer, even at the cost of some violence 
  of interpretation. Thus he declares that the Evangelist's assertion that all things 
  were made by the Logos must be understood only of the things of the visible creation, 
  his own doctrine being that the higher aeon world was not so made, but that the 
  lower creation was made by the Logos through the instrumentality of the Demiurge.
caption: Orthodox icon of Photina, the Samaritan woman, meeting Jesus by the well.
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