RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIESrabbis, and to a lesser extent the Christian clergy (in their opposition
to the antisocial aspects of Manichaean asceticism).
Meanwhile, gnostic ideas survived because they were attached to
sects that were organized during the crisis. The main representative
and vehicle of Christian gnosticism was the Marcionite Church, which
was formed in the middle of the second century and lasted until at
least the tenth century. Judging from the polemics of Ephrem Syrus
in the fourth century, Marcionites believed that the world was created
by a God of Justice who rewarded the righteous and punished the evil;
but he was not able to bring relief to the just in this world because
he was balanced and opposed by an Alien Force that favored the
wicked and oppressed the good. They also believed in a more powerful
God of Goodness who purchased human souls from the God of Justice
and sent a Stranger who brought earthly promises to the simpleminded
and a spiritual message to the elite. The distinction between the elite
and the simpleminded was reflected in the organization of the Mar-
cionite Church. Baptized Marcionites were a spiritual elite who re-
mained pure through celibacy, continual fasting, and excessive prayer-
acts not required of the average Marcionite. They also tended to be
antinomian in their rejection of the God ofJustice and used the rhetoric
of divine healing for their Redeemer who "abrogated the former laws
and healed injured organs." Their hostility to the God of the Bible
took a strangely inverted form in which they regarded Biblical villains
as heroes. Marcionite sub-sects honored Cain and Seth and even the
Serpent who had tried to give Adam and Eve the knowledge denied
to them by the Creator.^78 Marcionites could thus integrate easily with
snake-worshiping pagans in Iraq.
Marcionites were common in Armenia and upper Mesopotamia in
the fourth and fifth centuries and could be found in Iraq in the sixth
and early seventh centuries. There were Marcionites at the ordination
procession of the Nestorian catholicos Sabhrish6' at Mada'in in 596.
A reference to a Marcionite priest and sorcerer (Ar. sa~ir) around the
turn of the century suggests that they still had some sort of organi-
zation. Marcionites were also present at the Nestorian "disputation"
78 Ibn an-Nadim, Fihrist, 11, 807; C. W. Mitchell, S. Ephraim's Prose Refutations of
Mani, Marcion and Bardaisan (London, 1912-21), pp. xxv-xxvi, xxxi, lvii-lviii, lxiii,
54-57, 68, 125, 132, 136-37; Runciman, Manichee, pp. 8-10. They called Jesus the
Stranger's son. On Marcion, see E. C. Blackman, Marcion and His Influence (London,
1948), and A. van Harnack, Marcion (Darmstadt, 1960).