THE PROPHECY IN ASIA MINOR AND BEYOND

Chapter two of this study will look at the early stages of Montanism in the three centres of which we know most: Asia Minor, Rome and Carthage. This will take us up to at least the second decade of the third century – to the time of Apollonius in Asia Minor, to Hippolytus in Rome and to Tertullian in Carthage.

The Prophecy had also reached other places. In the period in question we hear of it from writers associated with Egypt, viz. Clement of Alexandria and Origen (Clement Strom, iv.13.93.1; cf. vii.17.108.1 (Phrygian heresy); Origen De princ. ii.7.3). The former (the elder of the two) lived in Caesarea of Cappadocia from 202 ce, though formerly in Alexandria where he had been head of the Catechetical School. Origen had replaced him in that rôle. Their testimony confirms: (a) that prophecy itself was important in the debate with the catholics (Clement proposed to argue with them and others in a work Concerning Prophecy); and (b) that Prophets used the term ‘psychics’ as one of denigration of the catholics (Clement). It confirms too (Origen) that they had distinctive teaching about the Paraclete (cf. In Matthaeum xv, 30) and were zealous in religious obligations (‘per ostentationem acrioris observantiae’) including abstinence from foods and forbidding of marriage. But both writers were probably dependent on sources from elsewhere. Origen had been in Rome a few years prior to writing De principiis (c. 225 ce), though his reference to Agabus and the daughters of Philip in his commentary on Matthew (xxviii) suggests knowledge of a debate about prophecy such as we know from Asia (Eusebius HE v.17,3 [Anonymous]).