Artemon, Artemonites
From Ecclesiastical History
Artemon, Artemonites, belong to that class of ante-Nicene Monarchians, or Anti-trinitarians, who saw in Christ a mere man filled with divine power. Of Artemon, or Artemas, we know very little. He taught in Rome at the end of the 2nd and beginning of the 3rd cent., and was excommunicated by pope Zephyrinus (202–217), who, as we learn from the Philosophumena of Hippolytus, favoured the opposite error of Patripassianism. He declared the doctrine of the divinity of Christ to be an innovation dating from the time of Zephyrinus, the successor of Victor, and a relapse into heathen polytheism. He asserted that Christ was a mere man, but born of a virgin, and superior in virtue to the prophets. The Artemonites were charged 53with placing Euclid above Christ, and abandoning the Scriptures for dialectics and mathematics. This indicates a critical or sceptical turn of mind. The views of Artemon were afterwards more fully developed by Paul of Samosata, who is sometimes counted with the Artemonites. The sources of our fragmentary information are Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. v. 28; Epiphanius, Haer. lxv. 1, 4; Theodoret, Haer. Fab. ii. 4; Photius, Biblioth. 48. Cf. Schleiermacher's essay on the Sabellian and Athanasian conceptions of the Trinity (Works, vol. ii.), and Dorner's Entwicklungsgeschichte der L. v. d. Person Christi, 2nd ed. i. 508 ff.
[P.S.]
[53]It is impossible not to recognize Cyprian's style in it; equally impossible not to see the Gk. [A] in some of its compound phrases and coupled epithets (e.g. i. magnam voluntatis caritatem in unum convenire; iii. velociter currentes, iv. quoniam sermo . . . distribuatur, etc.). [B] In the literal (sometimes awkward) rendering of words: iv. seniores et praepositi (= presbyteri et epicopi) for πρεσβύτεροι καὶ προεστῶτες; vii. praesident majores natu, where Cyprian could not have used presbyteri and yet age is not to the point; fratribus tam longe positis (μακρὰν κειμήνοις); v. inexcusabilem; vi. eos qui Romae sunt; aequaliter quae; vii. possident potestatem; x. nec vexari in aliquo; quamvis ad imaginem veritatis tamen; xxiii. volentibus vivere; xii. Nos etiam illos quos hi qui. [C] Instances where the Gk. is not thoroughly mastered: viii. nisi si his episcopis quibus nunc minor fuit Paulus (? τῶν νῦν); xii. ut per eos qui cum ipsi, etc.; cum unmeaning—observe in ix. patrias of local persecutions in Asia Minor. The remarkable translation of Eph. 4, 3, in xxiv. is in the same words as in three other places of Cyprian, and differs from every other known rendering; even the African Nemesianus in this council uses curantes instead of satisagentes.
