Lucanus (1)
Lucanus (1), or Lucianus,
Marcionite (Lucanus, Pseudo-Tert. 18;
Philast. 46, and
so probably their source, the Syntagma of
Hippolytus; Tertull. de Resur. Carn. 2;
Λουκᾶνος,
Orig. cont. Cels. ii. 27; on the
other hand, Λουκιανός
Hippol. Ref. vii. 37; Epiph. Haer.
43). The former is the better
attested form, and more likely to have been
altered into the other. The Lucianites are
reckoned as a sect distinct from the Marcionites,
as well by Origen as by Hippolytus and
his followers; but lack of authentic report of
any important difference in doctrine leads us
to believe that Lucanus did not separate from
Marcion, but that after the latter's death
Lucanus was a Marcionite teacher (probably
at Rome), whose celebrity caused his followers
to be known by his name rather than by that
of the original founder of the sect. They may
have been so called in contradistinction to the
Marcionites of the school of Apelles, who
approached more nearly to the orthodox.
Origen's language (οἶμαι)
implies that he had
no very intimate knowledge of the teaching of
Lucanus; he will not speak positively as to
whether Lucanus tampered with the Gospels.
Epiphanius owns that, the sect being extinct
in his time, he had difficulty in obtaining
accurate information about it. Tertullian
alone (u.s.) seems to have direct knowledge
of the teaching of Lucanus. He accuses him
of going beyond other heretics who merely
denied the resurrection of the body, and of
maintaining that not even the soul would rise,
but some other thing, neither soul nor body.
Neander (Ch. Hist. ii. 189) interprets this to
mean that Lucanus held that the
ψυχή would
perish and the πνεῦμα
alone be immortal; and
possibly this may be so, though Tertullian's
language would lead us to attribute to Lucanus
a theory more peculiar to himself than this
would be. Some commentators, taking a jest
of Tertullian's too literally, have, without good
reason, ascribed to Lucanus a doctrine of
transmigration of souls of men into bodies of
brutes. They have, however, the authority
of Epiphanius (Haer. 42, p. 330) for
regarding this doctrine as one likely to be held
by a Marcionite. Lucanus has been conjectured
to be the author of the apocryphal Acts which
bore the name of
LEUCIUS,
and Lardner treats
the identification as certain. Even, however,
if it were certain that the Acts of Leucius were
Marcionite, not Manichean, and as early as the
2nd cent., there is no ground for this identification
but the similarity of name.
[G.S.]