Colarbasus

In Christian Gnostic religious history, the Colarbasians (from Gk. Colarbasus, Hippol., Ps. Tert.; Colorbasus, Iren., Epiph., Theodoret, Philast. cod., Aug.; C. Bassus Philast. codd.) were a supposed sect of the 2nd century, deemed heretics, so called from their leader Colarbasus, a disciple of Valentinius. Colarbasus, along with Marcus, another disciple of Valentinius, was said to maintain the whole plenitude, and perfection of truth and religion, to be contained in the Greek alphabet; and that it was for this reason that Jesus was called the Alpha and Omega.

The name occurs first, and that only incidentally, in a solitary passage of Irenaeus (i. 14, 1) which has been the subject of much discussion.

Marcus, Irenaeus seems to say, boasted that he alone was allowed to become the womb and receptacle of the Sigé (Silence) of Colarbasus; the offspring to which he gave birth being the statement and revelation recorded afterwards. There is no previous mention of Colarbasus. Irenaeus has for six pages been speaking of Marcus alone. Eleven pages back he refers briefly to "a certain other Illustrious teacher of theirs" [the Valentinians]; but there is no coincidence of doctrine, and nothing to suggest that the nameless, or obscurely named [Epiphanes], heretic was himself Colarbasus, as some have supposed.

According to Philaster (Haer. 43) Colarbasus taught after Marcus and "in like manner:" his two lines of description are merely a vague echo of Marcosian doctrine. Pseudo-Tertullian (15) combines the two names indistinguishably in one article. Their common source, the lost Compendium of Hippolytus, can have contained no special information about Colarbasus. When Hippolytus wrote the great later treatise Against all Heresies, he was evidently not better instructed. At the beginning of the sixth book he promises to describe "the doctrines held by Marcus and Colarbasus;" he devotes in due course twenty-three pages to a repetition of Irenaeus's account of Marcus; and at the end he considers he has sufficiently shown who [viz., Pythagoreans and astrologers] were the masters of Marcus and Colarbasus, "the successors in the school of Valentinus:" yet not a word is given to Colarbasus separately. Once elsewhere (iv. 13) Colarbasus is said to have "endeavoured to expound theology by measures and numbers;" but this is simply the Marcosian method.

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