This paper focuses on analyzing the meaning of the appearance of the star at the birth of Christ from the ideological point of view of the ancient citizen. Romans understood this phenomenon as an omen of royalty or future power for the newborn; the Fathers of the Church interpreted it in different ways and attempted to explain it both to Christians as well as to Jews and Pagans.

Saint Hilary of Poitiers in his Commentary on Matthew explains the famous scene of the centurion and his servant (Mt. 8, 5-13). According to Hilary, the centurion represents the “prince of the nations,” but he does not explain who this “prince” is because he wants to speak about the servant. However, he gives two references in the Bible for those who want to know who this prince is. The hypothesis defended in this article maintains that the prince is an angel who looks after the Gentile nations. This hypothesis is grounded in research on Hilary’s biblical references and in the comparison with other texts in which he expounds his doctrine about this type of angel.

The focus is on the meaning of ὑπόϑεσις in Irenaeus of Lyons’ Adversus haereses. Our case is to argue that two different elements converge in ὑπόϑεσις or its translations (especially argumentum) in the Latin version of AH. The first stems from the Greek literary field, in which ὑπόϑεσις means the “subject” or “plot” of a dramatic or poetic composition. The second is related to the philosophical meaning of ὑπόϑεσις as “that which is placed under” or “foundation”. On the one hand, Irenaeus uses ὑπόϑεσις theologically to express the plot of the historia salutis, so that the term can be understood as teaching or doctrine. On the other hand, this ὑπόϑεσις is at the same time a regula, the normative foundation of all the elements that take part in God’s economy of salvation.

At the beginning of Irenaeus of Lyons’ Adversus Haereses, the doctrine of the Valentinian Ptolemy is presented using terms from the semantic field of time and eternity, which were undergoing a semantic evolution in contemporary Middle Platonic philosophy. These allow us to identify three phases, from a chronological point of view, at the beginning of the Valentinian myth: strict, supra-durational, eternity – eternity of indefinite duration – moment ante tempus.