Irmãos de fé, irmãos hereges: a narrativa da diferença em Ireneu de Lião - século II EC

Abstract

The plurality of interpretations about the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth was a reality in early 2nd century CE. Several were oral and written discourses circulating between the Christian communities. This question demonstrates not only the different intellectual forces which divulged, in the middle of the followers of the Way, their views on this belief. This factor denounces the presence of interpretative divergences and the necessity to control these voices that pass to stand out between the paleocristan communities. In an attempt to build a collective identity based, not on Jesus, but on Jesus as interpreted by episcopal forces, leaders gain prestige in the middle of the power relations present in the religious field. In this sense, there are discursive efforts, such as that of Bishop Irenaeus of Lyon in the region of Gaul, to register and refute the interpretive diversity about the Nazarene in his work Adversus Haereses, written between 180-185 CE. Being this ancient writing observed as literature, will be verified the use of a performance speech, according to the conceptual analysis of performance developed by Paul Zumthor. With a perception focused on transdisciplinarity, which emphasizes the relations of discontinuity, complexity of the theme and alterity, the tension of these various christianisms categorized by Irenaeus as a true and false gnosis becomes latent. In this work, the bishop of Gaul seeks to reidentify the diverse as a heretic, that is to say, not a Christian, and on the other, to reiterate the legitimacy of the discourse of his political group, which is treated as the sole holder of the true understanding of the christian experience. Thus, not only what was written by the leaders, but also what could be read, taught by the masters or who could be received as a "brother of faith" in the communities would also be of concern. With a theatrical writing aimed at the construction of the other, such an effort by Irenaeus of Lyon seeks not only to re-signify the Christian experience but also to demonstrate a discursive strategy in the middle of the power relations existing in this period.