1. THE SUMMARY OF THE PHILOSOPHERS 150
2. THE SUMMARY OF THE HERESIES 153
3. THE WORD OF TRUTH 171
INDEX 179
PHILOSOPHUMENA
BOOK VI
SIMON MAGUS, VALENTINUS, AND THEIR FOLLOWERS
[Sidenote: p. 242 Cruice.] 1. These are the contents of the 6th (book)
of the _Refutation of all Heresies_.
2. What Simon has dared, and that his doctrine is confirmed (by
quotations) from magicians and poets.
3. What Valentinus has laid down, and that his doctrine is not framed
from the Scriptures, but from those of the Platonists and Pythagorists.
4. And what is thought by Secundus, Ptolemy and Heracleon, and how they
have used as their own, but with different words, the thoughts of those
whom the Greeks (think) wise.
5. What has been held by Marcus and Colarbasus [and their disciples]
and that some of them gave heed to magic arts and Pythagorean numbers.
6. Now such opinions as belong to those who have taken their principles
from the serpent[1] and, when the time arrived, of their own accord
brought their doctrines into light, we have set forth in the Book
before this, being the [Sidenote: p. 243.] Vth of the _Refutation
of all Heresies_. Here, however, I will not keep silence as to the
opinions of those who come after (them),[2] but will leave not one
unrefuted, if it be possible to keep them all in mind, together with
their secret rites which are justly to be called orgies, inasmuch as
those who dare such things are not far from God’s wrath[3]--to use the
word in its etymological sense.
1. _About Simon._
7. It seems then right now to set forth also the (doings) of Simon,[4]
the man of Gitto,[5] a village of Samaria, whereby we shall show that
those also who followed (him) taking hints from other names have
ventured upon like things. This Simon, being skilled in magic arts
and having played upon many, sometimes by the Thrasymedean[6] process
in the way we have set forth above, but sometimes working iniquity by
means of devils, designed to deify himself, (although only) a human
sorcerer filled with desperation whom the [Sidenote: p. 244.] Apostles
refuted in the _Acts_.[7] Than whom Apsethus the Libyan was much wiser
and more modest when he ambitiously attempted to be considered a god in
Libya. Whose story as it is not very different from the vain desire of
Simon, it seems fitting to narrate as one worthy to have been attempted
by Simon himself.
8. Apsethus the Libyan yearned to become a god. But since, after making
himself very busy, he utterly failed (to accomplish) his desire, he
wished at all events to appear to have become one, and seemed as if he
might really effect this in course of time. For the foolish Libyans
sacrificed to him as to some divine power, thinking that they must
give faith to a voice from heaven above. For he collected and shut up
in one and the same cage a great many of the birds called parrots;
there being many parrots in Libya who imitate quite clearly the human
voice. For some time he fed the birds and taught them to say “Apsethus
is a god”: and when the birds had been [Sidenote: p. 245.] trained
for a long time, and repeated the saying which he thought would make
Apsethus be considered a god, he opened the cage and let the parrots
out in all directions. The noise of the flying birds went forth into
all Libya, and their words reached as far as the land of the Greeks.[8]
And thus the Libyans being wonderstruck by the voices of the birds and
not understanding the trick played by Apsethus, held him for a god.
But a certain Greek having carefully studied the clever device of the
so-called god, not only refuted him by the (mouth of the) same parrots
but removed from the earth that human quack and rascal. The Greek
shut up many of the parrots and taught them to say instead (of their
former speech): “Apsethus shut us up and forced us to say: ‘Apsethus
is a god.’” And the Libyans hearing the parrots’ recantation (and) all
assembling with one mind burned Apsethus.[9]
9. This (sort of man) one must suppose Simon the magician (to be),
so that we would far sooner liken him to the Libyan who was born a
man than to (Him) who is really God.[10] But if the details of the
likeness be held accurate and the magician had some such passion as
Apsethus, we will undertake to teach Simon’s parrots that Simon who
stood, stands and will stand was not Christ, but [Sidenote: p. 246.]
a man (sprung) from seed, born of a woman[11] begotten from blood and
fleshly desire like the rest, and that he knew this to be so, we shall
easily show as the story goes on.[12] But Simon, stupidly and clumsily
garbling the Law of Moses--for when Moses has said that God was “a
burning and consuming fire,”[13]--he, not having received Moses’ saying
rightly, says that fire is the principle of the universals, and not
having comprehended the saying that God is not Fire, but a burning
and consuming fire, (thereby) not only rends in twain the Law of
Moses, but steals from Heraclitus the Obscure.[14] But Simon proclaims
that the principle of the universals is a boundless power, speaking
thus:--“This is the writing of the Announcement[15] of Voice and Name
from the Thought of the great power of the Boundless One. Wherefore it
will be sealed up, hidden, concealed and will be in the dwelling-place
where the root of the universals is founded.”[16] But he says that
the dwelling-place is the same man who has been begotten from blood
and that the [Sidenote: p. 247.] Boundless Power dwells in him, which
(power) he says is the root of the universals. But the Boundless Power,
the fire according to Simon, is not simple as the many say who think
that the four elements are simple and that fire is simple; but there is
a certain double nature of fire, and of this double nature he calls one
part hidden and the other manifest. But the hidden (parts) have been
hidden in the manifest parts of the fire, and the manifest have come
into being by the hidden. This it is which Aristotle calls potentiality
and action, and Plato the comprehensible and the perceptible.[17]
And the manifest (part) of the fire contains within itself all which
one can perceive[18] or which can escape one, but remains visible;
but the hidden (part) contains everything which one can perceive as
something intelligible but which evades the sense or which as not
being thoroughly understood one passes over. But it must be said
generally that of all things which are perceptible and intelligible,
which Simon calls hidden and manifest,[19] the supercelestial fire is
the Treasure-house,[20] like unto the great tree which was seen by
Nebuchadnezzar in a dream, from which all flesh is fed.[21] [Sidenote:
p. 248.] And he considers the trunk, the boughs, the leaves, and the
bark on the outside of it to be the manifest part of the fire. All
these things which are attached to the great tree the flame of the
all-devouring fire causes to vanish. But the fruit of the tree, if
it be made a perfect likeness[22] and has received its own shape, is
placed in a storehouse and not in the fire. For the fruit, he says, has
been produced that it may be put in a storehouse, but the chaff that
it may be cast into the fire, which (chaff) is the trunk which has not
been produced for its own sake, but for that of the fruit.
10. And this is, he says, what is written in the Scripture: “The
vine of the Lord Sabaoth is the house of Israel, and a man of Judah
his beloved plant.”[23] But if a man of Judah is his beloved plant,
it proves, he says, that a tree is nothing else than a man. But of
its secretion and dissolution, he says, the Scripture has spoken
sufficiently, and for the instruction of those who have been made
completely after (its) likeness,[24] the saying is enough that: “All
flesh is grass and all the glory of the flesh as the flower of grass.
The grass withereth and the flower fadeth away: but the word [Sidenote:
p. 249.] of the Lord abideth for ever.”[25] But the word, he says, is
the word and speech of the Lord born in the mouth, save which there is
no other place of generation.
11. But, to be brief, since the fire is such according to Simon,
and all things are seen and unseen as they are heard and unheard,
numbered and unnumbered, in the _Great Announcement_ he calls a perfect
intellectual[26] every one of those (beings) which can be boundlessly
conceived by the mind in a boundless way[27] and can speak and think
and act, as says Empedocles:--
For earth by earth we see, and water by water
And (divine) æther by æther, yet destroying fire by fire,
And (love) by love, and strife in gloomy strife.--
(Karsten, v. 321.)
12. For, he says, he considered all the parts of the fire which
are invisible to have sense and a share of mind.[28] [Sidenote: p.
250.] Therefore the cosmos, he says, came into being begotten by the
unbegotten fire. But it began to be, he says, after this fashion:--He
who was produced from the beginning from that fire took six roots,
the first ones of the principle of generation.[29] And he says that
the roots came from the fire in pairs, which roots he calls Mind and
Thought, Voice and Name, Reasoning and Passion,[30] but that the whole
of the Boundless Power together is in these six roots potentially,
but not actively. The which Boundless Power he says is He who Stood,
Stands, and will Stand. Who if he be made into a complete image (of
the fire) will be in substance, power, greatness, and effect one and
the same with that Unbegotten and Boundless Power, and lacking nothing
possessed by that unbegotten and unchanging and infinite power. But if
he remains potentially only in the six powers and is not made into a
complete image (of the fire), he is done away with and is lost like as
the capacity for grammar or geometry in man’s soul. For power taking
[Sidenote: p. 251.] to itself skill becomes a light of the things which
are: but if it does not take unto itself (skill) it is unskilfulness
and darkness and as if it were not, it perishes[31] with the man at his
death.
13. But of these six powers and the seventh which is with the six, he
calls the first pair, (to wit) Nous and Epinoia, Heaven and Earth. And
(he says) that the masculine (partner) looks down from on high upon
and takes thought for his spouse and that the Earth below receives the
intellectual fruits proper to her brought down from Heaven to Earth.
Wherefore, he says, the Logos beholding often the things born from Nous
and Epinoia, that is from Heaven and Earth, says: “Hear, O Heaven,
and give ear, O Earth, for the Lord has spoken. I have begotten and
raised up sons, but they have disregarded me.”[32] He who thus speaks,
he says, is the Seventh Power who Stood, Stands and will Stand. For
he is the cause of those fair things which Moses praised and said
that [Sidenote: p. 252.] they were very good. And Phone and Onoma are
the Sun and Moon, and Logismos and Enthymesis Air and Water. But with
all these is mingled and compounded, as I have said, the great and
Boundless Power, He who has Stood.[33]
14. Since, therefore, Moses spake: “In six days God created Heaven and
Earth and the seventh day he rested from all his works,”[34] Simon
after re-arranging the passage, makes himself out a god. When then they
say that three days passed before the Sun and Moon existed,[35] they
shadow forth Nous and Epinoia and the Seventh Power, the Boundless
One. For these three powers were born before all the others. When they
say: “Before all the Aeons He has begotten me,”[36] (Simon) says that
this was spoken of the Seventh Power. But the same Seventh Power,
which was a power existing in the Boundless Power which was begotten
before all the Aeons, this is, he says, the Seventh Power of whom Moses
said: “And the Spirit of God was borne above the water,”[37] that is,
he says, the spirit containing [Sidenote: p. 253.] all things within
itself, an image of the Boundless Power, of whom Simon says “image of
the imperishable form which alone orders all things.” For that power
which was borne above the water having come into being, he says, from
the imperishable form, alone orders all things. Now when some such
and like preparations of the cosmos had come to pass, God, he says,
moulded[38] man, taking dust from the earth. But he fashioned him not
simple but twofold[39] according to image and resemblance. But the
spirit which was borne above the water is an image, which spirit if it
is not made a complete likeness,[40] perishes with the world, as it
abides only potentially and does not exist in activity. This, he says,
is the saying, “Lest ye be judged with the world.”[41] But if it be
made a complete likeness and is born from an Indivisible Point as it is
written in the Announcement, the small will become great. But it will
be great in the Boundless and Unchanging Aeon, being born no more.
How then and in what manner, he says, did God form man in Paradise?
For this is his opinion. Let, he says, Paradise be the womb, and that
this is true the Scripture teaches when it says: “I am he who fashioned
thee in thy mother’s womb.”[42] For this also he wishes to be thus
[Sidenote: p. 254.] written. Moses, he says, speaking in allegory,
calls Paradise the womb if we are to believe the word. But if God
fashions man in the womb of his mother, that is, in Paradise, as I have
said, let Paradise be the womb and Edem the placenta: “And a river went
forth from Edem and watered Paradise”[43] (this is) the navel-string.
The navel-string, he says, separates into four heads. For on each side
of the navel are set two arteries, conduits of breath, and two veins,
conduits of blood. But when he says, the navel-string goes forth from
the placenta it takes root in the infant by the epigastrium which all
men commonly call the navel. And the two veins it is through which
flows and is borne from Edem (the placenta) the blood to the so-called
gates of the liver whence the child is fed. But the arteries as we
have said, are the conduits of the breath[44] which pass behind on
either side of the bladder round the pelvis and make connection with
the great artery by the spine called the aorta, and thus through the
ventricles the breath flows upon the heart and causes [Sidenote: p.
255.] movement of the embryo. For the embryo in course of formation
in Paradise neither takes food by the mouth, nor breathes through the
nostrils. For, as it exists amid waters, death is at its feet if it
should breathe. For it would then draw in the waters and die. But it
is girt about almost wholly by the envelope called the amnion and is
fed through the navel, and through the aorta which is by the spine, it
receives, as I have said[45] the substance of the breath.
15. Therefore, he says, the river flowing forth from Edem separates
into four heads (or) four conduits, that is, into the child’s four
senses, sight, smell, taste, and touch. For the infant while being
formed in Paradise has these senses only. This, he says, is the Law
which Moses laid down; and agreeably with that same Law each of the
Books is written, as their titles clearly show. The first book (is)
_Genesis_ (and) the title of the book, he says, suffices for the
knowledge of the universals. For, he says, this is genesis, that is
sight into which one of the sections of the river separates; [Sidenote:
p. 256.] for the world is seen by sight. The title of the second book
is _Exodus_. For that which is born after crossing the Red Sea comes
into the Desert--he calls the blood, he says, the Red Sea--and tastes
bitter water. For bitter, he says, is the water which comes after the
Red Sea, which (water) is the way of knowledge of life pursued through
painful and bitter things. But when changed by Moses, that is by the
Logos, that bitter (water) becomes sweet. And that this is so, can be
known by all in common in the saying of the poets:--
Black was it at the root, but the flower was like milk
The gods call it Moly, but hard it is to dig
For mortal men, but to the gods all things are possible.--
(HOMER, _Odyssey_, X, 304 ff.)
16. What has been said by the nations, he says, suffices for the
thorough knowledge of the universals to those who have ears to hear.
For not only he who has tasted this fruit is not turned into a beast
by Circe; but those also [Sidenote: p. 257.] who have been already
brutified by use of the powers of such fruit, he moulds again into
their first and proper form and restores them to type and recalls
their (original) impress. And the faithful man and he who is beloved
by that witch is, he says, revealed through that milk-like and divine
fruit. Likewise _Leviticus_ the third book which is the smell or
inspiration.[46] For this book is of sacrifices and oblations. For
where there is a sacrifice there comes a certain savour of fragrance
from it through the incense, of which fragrance the sense of smell
(ought to be a test).[47] _Numbers_, the fourth book he calls taste ...[48]
where speech operates. But _Deuteronomy_, he says, is written
with reference to the sense of touch of the child in course of
formation. For as the touch, touching the things perceived by the other
senses, sums up and confirms them, teaching us whether (anything) be
hard or hot or cold,[49] so the fifth book of the Law is the summary
of the four books written before it. All the unbegotten things, then,
he says, are in potentiality not in activity, like the grammatical
or [Sidenote: p. 258.] geometrical art. If then one should chance
upon the fitting word and doctrine, and the bitter should be changed
into sweet, that is, the spears into reaping-hooks and the swords
into ploughshares,[50] (the child) will not be chaff and sticks for
producing fire, but a perfect fruit made in semblance (of), as I have
said (and) equal and like to, the Unbegotten and Boundless Power.
But should he remain only a tree and should not make a perfect fruit
fashioned in complete resemblance, he will be removed. For the axe is
near, he says, to the roots of the tree. Every tree, he says, which
maketh not fair fruit is cut down and cast into the fire.[51]
17. There is then, according to Simon, that blessed and incorruptible
thing hidden in everything, potentially not actively, which is He who
Stood, Stands and will Stand. It stood above in the Unbegotten Power,
it stands below amid the rush of the waters having been begotten in
likeness, and it will stand on high beside the blessed Unbegotten Power
if it be made in (his) perfect semblance. For there are, he says, three
who have stood, and unless there are [Sidenote: p. 259.] three Aeons
who have stood, then the Unbegotten One who according to them is borne
over the water, who by resemblance has been fashioned again perfect
(and) heavenly, who in one thought alone[52] is more lacking than the
Unbegotten Power, is not in its proper place.[53] This is what they
say: “I and thou, thou one before me, I after thee, am I.” This, he
says, is one power, divided above, below, begetting itself, increasing
itself, seeking itself, finding itself, being its own mother, its own
father, its own sister, its own spouse, its own daughter, its own son,
a mother-father,[54] being one root of the universals.
And that, he says, the beginning of the generation of things begotten
is from fire, he understands in some such fashion as this: In all
things whatever which have birth, the beginning of the desire of
generation comes from fire. As, for instance, the desire for mutable
generation[55] is called “being inflamed” [with love]. But the fire
from being one, turns into two. For in the man, he says, the blood
which is hot and yellow as fire is depicted, turns into seed; but in
the woman the selfsame blood (turns) into milk. [Sidenote: p. 260.]
And from the turning in the male comes generation and from that in
the female the nourishment of that which is generated.[56] This, he
says, is the flaming sword turning about to guard the path to the Tree
of Life. For the blood is turned to seed and milk and the same power
becomes father and mother of those which are born and the increase of
those which are nourished, itself lacking nothing and being sufficient
unto itself. But the Tree of Life is guarded he says, through the
turning of the flaming sword, as we have said, which (sword) is the
Seventh Power which is from itself, which contains all things (and)
which lies stored up in the six powers. For if the flaming sword did
not turn about, that fair tree would perish and be destroyed. But if
the Logos which is lying stored up potentially therein, is turned into
seed and milk, being lord of its proper place wherein is begotten a
Logos of souls,--then from the smallest spark it will become great and
increase in every sense and will be a boundless power unchangeable in
the aeon which changes not until it is in the Boundless Aeon.[57]
18. By this argument, then, Simon avowedly became a god to those
of no understanding, like that Apsethus the [Sidenote: p. 261.]
Libyan, being (said to be) begotten and subject to suffering when he
existed potentially, but (becoming) impassible (from passible, and
unbegotten)[58] from begotten when he was made in perfect semblance and
becoming perfect came forth from the first two powers, that is Heaven
and Earth. For Simon speaks explicitly of this in the _Announcement_,
thus:--
“Unto you I say what I say, and I write what I write. The writing
is this. There are two stems[59] of all the Aeons, having neither
beginning nor end, from one root, which is Power-Silence[60] unseen
and incomprehensible. One of them appears on high, who is a great
power, the mind of the universals, who orders all things and (is) a
male. And the other below is a great Thought, a female giving birth to
all things. These, then, being set over against each other[61] form a
pair and show forth the middle space, an incomprehensible air having
neither beginning nor end. In this (space) is a Father who upholds all
things and nourishes those which have a beginning and end. This is
He who Stood, Stands, and will Stand, being a masculo-feminine power
after the likeness of the pre-existing Boundless Power[62] which has
neither beginning nor end but exists in oneness. For the thought which
came forth from the (power) in oneness was two. And that was one. For
he [Sidenote: p. 262.] when he contained her within himself was alone,
nor was he indeed first although he existed beforehand, but having
himself appeared from himself, a second came into being. But he was
not called Father until she named him Father. Just as then he, drawing
himself forth from himself, manifested to himself his own thought, so
also the thought having appeared did not create him; but beholding
him, hid the Father--that is Power--within herself;[63] and there is a
masculo-feminine Power-and-Thought when they are set over against each
other. For Power does not differ at all from thought, they being one.
From the things on high is discovered Power; from those below Thought.
Thus then it is that that which appeared from them being one is found
to be two, a masculo-feminine having the female within it. This is Mind
in Thought for they being one when undivided from one another are yet
found to be two.”
19. Simon then having discovered (all) this, fraudulently interprets
as he wishes not only the (words) of Moses, but [Sidenote: p. 263.]
also those of the poets. For he turns into allegory the Wooden Horse
and Helen with the Torch and other things, altering which to the
affairs of himself and his Epinoia, he leads astray many. And he
says that she is that sheep which was lost, who ever dwelling in
many women[64] troubles the powers in the cosmos by her transcendent
beauty. Wherefore also the Trojan War occurred on account of her. For
Epinoia herself dwelt in Helen at that time, and all the authorities
suing for her (favours), faction and war arose among the nations in
which she appeared. Wherefore indeed Stesichorus having railed at her
in his verses had his eyes blinded, but having repented and written
the Palinode, was restored to sight.[65] She, being changed from one
body to another by the angels and authorities below [Sidenote: p.
264.] who made the world, came at last to stand in a brothel[66] in
Tyre, a city of Phœnicia, coming to which (Simon) found her. For at
her first enquiry, he said he had come to her aid, that he might free
her from her bonds, and when he had redeemed her she went about with
him pretending that she was the lost sheep, and he saying that he was
the Power above all things. But the rogue having fallen in love with
the hussy, the so-called Helen, and having bought her enjoyed her, and
being ashamed (before) his disciples made up this story. But they who
became (in time) the imitators of the error and of Simon Magus do like
things, pretending that they ought to have (promiscuous) intercourse
like beasts, saying: “All earth is earth and it matters not where one
sows, so long as one sows.” And they also bless this intercourse saying
that the same is perfect love and the “Holy of Holies” and that “ye
shall sanctify one another.” For they say that they are not overcome by
what any one else would call evil, for that they have been redeemed.
And that Simon having redeemed Helen has in like manner [Sidenote: p.
265.] brought salvation to men through his own discernment.[67] For
since the angels misgoverned the world through love of rule, he says
that he came to set it straight, having changed his shape and making
himself like the rulers[68] and authorities and angels, and that he
appeared as a man, though he was not a man and seemed to suffer in
Judæa, though he did not suffer.[69] But he appeared to the Jews as
Son, in Samaria as Father, and among the other nations as Holy Spirit.
And that he submitted to be called by whatever name men wished to call
him. And that the Prophets were inspired by the world-making angels to
utter their prophecies. Wherefore they who have believed on Simon and
Helen do not heed them,[70] and to this day do what they will as being
free. For they claim that they have been saved by his grace. For no one
is liable to judgment if he does anything evil; for evil exists not by
nature, but by [Sidenote: p. 266.] law. For he says it is the angels
who made the world who made the Law whatever they wished, thinking to
enslave those who hearkened to them. And again they say that (there
will be) a dissolution of the world for the redemption of their own
men.[71]
20. Therefore the disciples of this (man) practise magic arts and
incantations, and send out love-philtres and charms and the demons
called dream-bringers for the troubling of whom they will. But they
also do reverence to the so-called Paredri.[72] And they have an image
of Simon in the form of Zeus, and (another) of Helen in the form of
Athena, and they bow down to them calling the one “Lord” and the other
“Lady.”[73] But if any one among them seeing these images should call
them by the name of Simon or Helen, he is cast out as being ignorant of
their mysteries. This Simon when he had led astray many in Samaria by
magic arts was refuted by the Apostles, and [Sidenote: p. 267.] having
been laid under a curse as it is written in the _Acts_, afterwards in
desperation designed these things[74] until having come to Rome, he
withstood the Apostles. Whom Peter opposed when he was deceiving many
by sorceries. He at length coming into t......te,[75] taught sitting
under a plane-tree. And finally his refutation being very near[76]
through effluxion of time, he said that if buried alive he would rise
again the third day. And having given orders that a grave should be
dug by his disciples, he bade them bury him. And they having done
what he commanded, he remains there to this day; for he was not the
Christ. This then is Simon’s story, taking hints from which Valentinus
calls (the same things) by other names. For Nous and Aletheia, Logos
and Zoe, Anthropos and Ecclesia are Simon’s six roots, Nous-Epinoia,
Phone-Onoma, Logismos-Enthymesis. But since we have sufficiently set
forth Simon’s fable making, let us see what Valentinus says.[77]
2. _Concerning Valentinus._
[Sidenote: p. 268.] 21. The heresy of Valentinus,[78] then, exists,
having a Pythagorean and Platonic foundation. For Plato in the
_Timæus_ modelled himself entirely on Pythagoras, as is seen also by
his “Pythagorean stranger” being Timæus himself. Wherefore it seems
fitting that we should begin by recalling to mind a few (points) of the
theory of Pythagoras and Plato, and should then describe the (teaching)
of Valentinus. For if the opinions of Pythagoras and Plato are also
included in the (books) painfully written by us earlier, yet I shall
not be unreasonable in recalling[79] in epitome their most leading
tenets[80] in order that by their closer comparison and likeness of
composition, the doctrines of Valentinus may be more intelligible. For
as (the Pythagoreans and Platonists) took their opinions of old from
the Egyptians and taught them anew to the Greeks, so (Valentinus) while
fraudulently attempting to establish his own teaching by them, carved
[Sidenote: p. 269.] their system into names and numbers, calling them
[by names] and defining them by measures of his own. Whence he has
constructed a heresy Greek indeed, but not referable to Christ.
22. The wisdom of the Egyptians is, then, the beginning of Plato’s
theory in the _Timæus_. For from this, Solon[81] taught the Greeks the
whole position regarding the birth and destruction of the cosmos by
means of a certain prophetic statement, as Plato says, the Greeks being
then children and knowing no older theologic learning. In order then
that we may follow closely the words which Valentinus let fall, I will
now set out as preface what it was that Pythagoras of Samos taught as
philosophy after that silence praised by the Greeks. And then [I will
point out] those things which Valentinus takes from Pythagoras and
Plato and with solemn words attributes to Christ, and before Christ to
the Father of the universals and to that Sige who is given as a spouse
to the Father.
23. Now Pythagoras declared that the unbegotten monad was the principle
of the universals[82] and the parent of the dyad and of all the other
numbers. And he says that the [Sidenote: p. 270.] monad is the father
of the dyad and the dyad the mother of all engendered things (and)
a bearer of things begotten. And Zaratas,[83] also, the teacher of
Pythagoras, calls the one father, but the two, mother. For the dyad has
come into being from a monad according to Pythagoras, and the monad is
masculine and first, but the dyad female and second. From the dyad,
again, as Pythagoras says, (come) the triad and the other numbers one
after the other up to 10. For Pythagoras knew that this 10 is the only
perfect number.[84] For (he saw that) the 11 and 12 were an addition
to and re-equipment of the decad, and not the generation of some
other number. All solid bodies beget what is given to them from the
bodiless.[85] For, he says, the Point which is indivisible is at once a
point and a beginning of the bodies and the bodiless together. And, he
says, from the point comes a line, and a superficies extended in depth
makes, he says, a solid figure. Whence the Pythagoreans have a certain
oath as to the harmony of the four elements. And they make oath thus:--
[Sidenote: p. 271.] “Yea by the Tetractys handed down to our head
A source of eternal nature containing within itself roots.”[86]
For the beginning of natural and solid bodies is the Tetractys as the
monad is of the intelligible ones.[87] But that the Tetractys gives
birth to the perfect number as among the intelligibles the (monad) does
to the 10, they teach thus. If one beginning to count, says 1, and adds
2, and then 3 in like manner, these will make 6. (Add) yet another (_i.
e._) 4 and there in the same way will be the total 10. For the 1, 2, 3
and 4 become 10, the perfect number. Thus, he says, the Tetractys will
in all things imitate the intelligible monad having been thus able to
bring forth a perfect number.
24. There are, therefore, according to Pythagoras, two worlds, one
intelligible which has the monad as its beginning, but the other the
perceptible. This last is the Tetractys containing Iota,[88] the one
tittle, a perfect number. [Sidenote: p. 272.] Thus the Iota, the one
tittle, is received by the Pythagoreans as the first and chiefest, and
as the substance of the Intelligible both intelligibly and perceptibly.
Belonging to which are the nine bodiless accidents which cannot exist
apart from substance, (viz.) Quantity, Quality, Wherefore, Where,
and When, and also Being, Having, Doing and Suffering.[89] There are
therefore nine accidents to substance reckoned in with which they
comprise[90] the perfect number, the 10. Wherefore the universe being
divided, as we have said, into an intelligible and a perceptible world,
we have also reason from the intelligible in order that by it we may
behold the substance of the intelligible, the bodiless and the divine.
But we have, he says, five senses, smell, sight, hearing, taste and
touch. By these we arrive at a knowledge of perceptible things, and
so, he says, the perceptible world is separated from the intelligible;
and that we have an organ of knowledge for each of them, we learn
from this. None of the intelligibles, he says, can become known to us
through sense: for, he says, eye has not seen that, nor ear heard, nor
has it become known, he says, by any other of the senses whatever.
Nor again by reason can one come to a knowledge of the perceptible;
[Sidenote: p. 273.] but one must see that a thing is white, and taste
that it is sweet, and know by hearing that it is just or unjust; and
if any smell is fragrant or nauseous, that is the work of the sense
of smell and not of the reason. And it is the same with the things
relating to touch. For that a thing is hard or soft or hot or cold
cannot be known through the hearing, but the test of these things is
the touch. This being granted, the setting in order of the things that
have been and are is seen to come about arithmetically. For, just as
we, beginning by addition of monads (or dyads) or triads and of the
other numbers strung together, make one very large compound number, and
on the other hand work by subtracting from the total strung together
and by analysing by a fresh calculation what has been brought together
arithmetically;--so, he says, the cosmos is bound together by a certain
arithmetical and musical bond, and by its tightening and slackening,
its addition and subtraction, is ever and everywhere preserved
uncorrupted.
25. For instance in some such fashion as this also do the Pythagoreans
describe the duration of the world:--
[Sidenote: p. 274.] “For it was before and will be. Never I ween
Will the unquenchable aeon be devoid of these two.”
What are these (two)? Strife and Love.[91] But their love makes the
cosmos incorruptible and eternal, as they think. For substance and the
cosmos are one. But strife rends asunder and diversifies, and tries by
every means to make the world divide. Just as one cuts arithmetically
the myriad into thousands and hundreds and tens and drachmas, and
obols, and quarters by dividing it into small parts, so Strife cuts
the substance of the cosmos into animals, plants, metals and such
like things. And Strife is according to them, the Demiurge[92] of the
generation of all things coming to pass, and Love governs and provides
for the universe, so that it abides. And having collected into one the
scattered and rent (things) of the universe and leading them forth from
life, it joins and adds them to the universe so that it may abide and
be one. Never therefore will Strife cease from dividing the cosmos, nor
Love from attaching together [Sidenote: p. 275.] the separated things
of the cosmos. Something like this it seems is the “distribution”[93]
according to Pythagoras. But Pythagoras says that the stars are
fragments[94] of the sun and that the souls of animals are borne (to
us) from the stars. And that the same (souls) are mortal when they
are in the body being buried as it were in a tomb; but that they will
rise again and become immortal when we are separated from our bodies.
Whence Plato being asked by some one what Philosophy is, said: “It is a
separation of soul from body.”
26. Pythagoras, then, becoming a learner of these opinions, declared
some of them by means of enigmas and such like phrases, (such as:)
“If you are away from home, turn not back. Otherwise, the Furies the
helpers of justice will punish you.”[95] (For) he calls your home the
body and [Sidenote: p. 276.] the passions the Furies. If then, he says,
you are away from home, that is: if you have come forth from the body,
do not seek after it; but if you return to it, the passions will again
shut you up in a body. For they think there is a change of bodies
(μετενσωμάτωσις); as also Empedocles, when Pythagorizing, says. For the
pleasure-loving souls, as Plato says,[96] if they do not philosophize
when in man’s estate, must pass through the bodies of all animals and
plants and again return to a human body. But if (such a one) does
philosophize,[97] he will in the same way go on high thrice to his
kindred star; but if he does not philosophize will return again to the
same things. Thus he tells us that the soul is at once mortal if it be
ruled by the Furies, that is, by the Passions, and immortal if it flees
from them.
27. But seeing that we have picked out for narration the things darkly
uttered to his disciples under the veil of symbols, it seems fitting
to recall other sayings (of his), because the heresiarchs attempt to
deal in symbols in the same way; and these not their own, but using the
words of Pythagoras. [Sidenote: p. 277.] Now Pythagoras teaches his
disciples saying “Bind up the bed-sack,” since they who are setting out
on a journey make their clothing into a bundle, so as to be ready for
the road. Thus he wishes his disciples to be ready, as if at any moment
death might come upon them, so that they may not be caught lacking
anything. Wherefore he is obliged to enjoin the Pythagorean every
morning to bind up the bed-sack, that is to prepare for death. “Do not
stir the fire with a sword,” meaning do not provoke angry men; for he
likens an angry man to a fire and speech to a sword. “Do not tread on
sweepings,” that is, do not look down upon trifles. “Do not grow a palm
in a house,” that is, do not make a cause of strife in it. For the palm
is a symbol of fighting and strife. “Eat not from a stool” (that is),
practise no ignoble art, that you may not be a slave to the corruptible
body, but make your livelihood by lectures. For it is possible at
once to nourish the body [Sidenote: p. 278.] and to improve the soul.
“From a whole loaf bite off nought,” (that is) diminish not that which
belongs to you, but live on the income and keep the capital like a
whole loaf. “Eat not beans” (that is) Take not the rule of a city. For
by beans the rulers[98] were then elected.[99]
28. These and such like things, then, the Pythagoreans say, imitating
whom the heretics think they declare great things to certain men. The
Pythagorean doctrine says that the Great Geometrician and Reckoner[100]
the Sun is the Demiurge of all things that are, and is fixed in the
whole cosmos like the soul in bodies, as says Plato. For the Sun like
the soul is fire, but the earth a body. But if fire were absent,
nothing could be seen, nor could there be any solid perceptible to
the touch; for there is no solid without earth. Whence God having put
air in the midst, fashioned the body of the universe from fire and
earth.[101] But the Sun reckons and measures the cosmos in some such
fashion as this. The cosmos is that perceptible one of which we are now
speaking. But (the Sun) divides it as an arithmetician and geometrician
into twelve parts. And the names of these [Sidenote: p. 279.] parts
are:--Ram, Bull, Twins, Crab, Lion, Virgin, Scales, Scorpion, Archer,
He-goat, Waterbearer and Fishes. Again, he divides each of the twelve
parts into thirty which are the thirty days of the month. And again he
divides each of the thirty parts into sixty minutes and (each) minute
into yet smaller and smaller parts. And thus ever creating without
ceasing, but gathering together from these divided parts and making a
cycle, and again dissolving it and separating that which has been put
together, he perfects the great deathless cosmos.[102]
29. Something like this, as I have just summarily said, is the teaching
framed by Pythagoras and Plato. From which and not from the Gospels,
Valentinus has drawn his own heresy, as we shall show, and should
therefore be reckoned a Pythagorean and a Platonist, but not as a
Christian. Accordingly he and Heracleon and Ptolemy and all their
school, the disciples of Pythagoras and Plato copying their teachers,
have framed an arithmetical doctrine of their own. [Sidenote: p. 280.]
For indeed an unbegotten, incorruptible, incomprehensible fruitful
Monad is to them the beginning of all and the cause of the birth of all
things that are. Yet a certain wide difference is found among them. For
some of them, that they may keep wholly pure the Pythagorean teaching
of Valentinus, consider the Father to be unfeminine,[103] spouseless,
and alone: whereas the others, thinking it absolutely impossible that
there could be a birth of all things that have been born from any
single male, are compelled to reckon Sige[104] as a spouse to the
Father of the universals in order that he may become a father. But
as to whether Sige is a spouse or not, let them fight it out with
each other.[105] We, keeping steadfast at present to the Pythagorean
(doctrine of) the beginning and remembering what others teach, say
that He is one, without spouse, without female, in need of nought. In
a word (Valentinus) says at the beginning nothing was begotten, but
the Father was alone, unbegotten, having neither place, nor time, nor
counsellor, nor any other thing that by any figure of speech could be
understood as essence.[106] But He was alone and solitary, as they
say, and resting alone within Himself. And when He was filled with
fruit, He saw fit to beget and bring forth the most [Sidenote: p.
281.] beautiful and perfect thing He had within Himself. For He did
not love to be alone.[107] For He, Valentinus says, was all Love and
love is not love unless there be something to be loved. Then the Father
himself projected and engendered, as He was alone, Mind and Truth,[108]
that is a dyad, which became the lady and beginning and mother of all
the aeons reckoned by them as being within the Pleroma. But Nous and
Aletheia having been projected by the Father, a fruitful (projection)
from the fruitful, imitating the Father projected also the Word and
Life;[109] and Logos and Zoe projected Man and the Church.[110] But
Nous and Aletheia when they saw that their own special progeny had
become fruitful, gave thanks to the Father of the universals and
offered to him a perfect number, ten Aeons. For than this, he says,
Nous and Aletheia could offer to the Father no more perfect number. For
the Father being perfect ought to be glorified with a perfect number.
And the ten is perfect because as the first of things that came into
being by addition, it is complete.[111] But the Father is more perfect
because he [Sidenote: p. 282.] alone is unbegotten, and by the first
single syzygy of Nous and Aletheia supplied the projection of all the
roots of the things that are.
30. Then when Logos and Zoe saw that Nous and Aletheia had glorified
the Father of the universals in a perfect number, Logos himself with
Zoe[112] also wished to glorify his own father and mother, Nous and
Aletheia. But since Nous and Aletheia were begotten and did not possess
the complete paternal unbegotten nature,[113] Logos and Zoe did not
glorify their father Nous with a perfect number, but with an imperfect
one: for Logos and Zoe offer twelve Aeons to Nous and Aletheia. For
the first roots of the Aeons according to Valentinus were Nous and
Aletheia, Logos and Zoe, Anthropos and Ecclesia. But there are twelve
Aeons two of which are the children of Nous and Aletheia and ten those
of Logos and Zoe, in all twenty-eight. And these are the names by
which they call (the ten): Profound and Mixture, Who-grows-not-old
and Oneness, Self-grown and [Sidenote: p. 283.] Pleasure, Unmoved and
Blending, Unique and Blessedness.[114] Of these ten Aeons some say
that they are by Nous and Aletheia and others by Logos and Zoe; and
there are twelve others which some say are by Anthropos and Ecclesia
and others by Logos and Zoe. To whom they give these names: Paraclete
and Faith, Fatherly and Hope, Motherly and Love, Ever-thinking and
Union, Of the Church and Blessed, Beloved and Wisdom.[115] Of the
twelve the twelfth and youngest of all the twenty-four Aeons who was
a female and called Sophia,[116] perceived the multitude and power of
the Aeons who had been begotten and shot up into the Height of the
Father. And she comprehended that all the other begotten Aeons existed
and had been brought forth in pairs, but that the Father alone produced
without a partner. She wished to imitate the Father and gave birth
by herself and apart from her spouse, so that she might work no work
lacking anything more than did the work of the Father, [Sidenote: p.
284.] being ignorant that only the Unbegotten principle and root and
height and depth of the universals can possibly bring forth alone.
For in the Unbegotten, he says, all things exist together; but among
the begotten the female is the projector of substance, but the male
gives form to the substance[117] which the female projects. Therefore
Sophia projected only that which she could, a substance shapeless
and unformed.[118] And this, he says, is what Moses said: “Now the
earth was invisible and unformed.”[118] She, he says, is the good or
heavenly Jerusalem into which God declared he would lead the children
of Israel, saying: “I will lead you into a good land flowing with milk
and honey.”[119]
31. Ignorance, then, having come about within the Pleroma by Sophia,
and formlessness by the offspring of Sophia, confusion came to pass
within it. For the Aeons (feared) that what was born from them would be
born [Sidenote: p. 285.] shapeless and imperfect, and that corruption
would before long destroy them. Then all the Aeons took refuge in
prayers to the Father that he would give rest to the sorrowing Sophia.
For she was weeping and mourning over the Abortion[120] brought forth
by her--for so they call it. Then the Father took pity on the tears
of Sophia, and hearkened to the prayers of the Aeons and commanded a
projection to be made. For he himself did not project, but Nous and
Aletheia projected Christ and the Holy Spirit for the giving form to
and the separation of the Ectroma and the relief and intermission of
the groans of Sophia. And thirty Aeons came into existence with Christ
and the Holy Spirit. But some of them will have it that there is a
triacontad of Aeons, but others that Sige co-exists with the Father,
and wish the Aeons to be counted in with those (two). Then, when Christ
and the Holy Spirit had been projected[121] by Nous and Aletheia, he
straightway separates from the complete Aeons Ectroma, the shapeless
and unique[122] thing which had been brought forth by Sophia apart
from her [Sidenote: p. 286.] spouse, so that the perfect Aeons might
not be troubled by the sight of her shapelessness. Then, that the
shapelessness of Ectroma might no way be apparent to the perfect Aeons,
the Father again projected one Aeon (to wit) the Cross, who having been
born great from the great and perfect Father and projected as a guard
and palisade to the Aeons, becomes the limit of the Pleroma containing
within him all the thirty Aeons together: for they were projected
before him. And he is called Horos because he separates from the
Pleroma the Void[123] without; and Metocheus[124] because he partakes
also in the Hysterema; and Stauros because he is fixed unbendingly and
unchangeably, so that nothing from the Hysterema can abide near the
Aeons who [Sidenote: p. 287.] are within the Pleroma. And when Sophia
Without had been transformed and it was not possible for Christ and the
Holy Spirit, the projections of Nous and Aletheia, to remain outside
the Pleroma, they returned from her who had been transformed, to Nous
and Aletheia within Horos, so that he with the other Aeons might
glorify the Father.
32. Since then there was a certain single peace and harmony of all
the Aeons within the Pleroma, it seemed good to them not only to have
glorified the Father in pairs, but also to glorify him by the offering
to him of fitting fruits. Therefore all the thirty Aeons were well
pleased to project one Aeon, the Common Fruit of the Pleroma, so that
he might be the (fruit) of their unity and likemindedness and peace.
And as He alone was projected by all the Father’s Aeons, He is called
by them the Common Fruit of the Pleroma. Thus then were things within
the Pleroma. And the Common Fruit of the Pleroma was projected, (to
wit) Jesus--for that is His name--the Great High Priest. [Sidenote:
p. 288.] But Sophia without the Pleroma seeking after Christ, who
had given her shape and the Holy Spirit, stood in great fear, lest
she might perish when separated from Him who had given her shape and
had established her. And she mourned and was in great perplexity
considering who it was that had given her shape, who the Holy Spirit
was, whence she had gone forth, who had hindered them from coming near
her, (and) who had begrudged her that fair and blessed vision. Brought
low by these passions, she turns to beseeching supplication of Him who
had left her. Then Christ who was within the Pleroma had compassion
on her beseeching, as had all the Aeons of the Pleroma, and they send
forth outside the Pleroma its Common Fruit to be a spouse to Sophia
Without and the corrector of the passions which she suffered while
seeking after Christ.[125] Then the Fruit being outside the Pleroma and
finding her amid the first four passions (to wit) in fear and grief and
perplexity and supplication, corrected her passions, but did not think
it seemly in correcting them that they should be destroyed, since they
[Sidenote: p. 289.] were eternal and special to Sophia, nor yet that
Sophia should be among such passions as fear and grief, supplication
and perplexity. He, therefore, being so great an Aeon and the offspring
of the whole Pleroma, made the passions stand away from her and He made
them fundamental essences.[126] And He made the fear into the essence
of the soul,[127] and the grief into that of matter, and the perplexity
into (that) of demons, but the conversion and entreaty and supplication
He made a path to repentance and (the) power of the soul’s essence,
which (essence) is called the Right Hand or Demiurge from fear. This,
he says, is the Scripture saying: “The beginning of wisdom is fear of
the Lord.”[128] For it was the beginning of the passions of Sophia. For
she feared, then she grieved, then she was perplexed, and [Sidenote: p.
290.] then she took refuge in prayer and supplication. And the essence
of the soul, he says, is fiery and is called a (supercelestial) Place
and Hebdomad and Ancient of Days.[129] And whatever things they say
of him, he says, the same belong to the psychic one whom they declare
to be the Demiurge of the Cosmos; but he is fiery. And Moses also, he
says, spake, “The Lord thy God is a burning and consuming fire.”[130]
And truly he wishes this (text) to be thus written. But the power of
the fire, he says, is in some sort double; for it is an all-devouring
fire (and) cannot be quenched. And according to this, indeed, a part of
the soul is mortal, being a certain middle state; for it is a Hebdomad
and Laying to Rest. For below (the soul) is of the Ogdoad where is
Sophia, a day which has been given shape, and the Common Fruit of the
Pleroma; but above it is of Matter wherein is the Demiurge.[131] If
it makes itself completely like those who are on high in the Ogdoad,
it becomes immortal and comes to the Ogdoad, which is, he says, the
heavenly Jerusalem; but if it makes itself completely like matter, that
is to the material passions, it is corruptible and is destroyed.
33. As therefore the first and greatest power of the [Sidenote: p.
291.] psychic essence becomes an image [of the only-begotten Son, so
the power of the material essence] is the devil, the ruler of this
world, and (that) of the essence of demons, which is from perplexity,
is Beelzebud.[132] But it is Sophia on high who works from the Ogdoad
up to the Hebdomad. They say that the Demiurge knows absolutely
nothing, but is according to them mindless and foolish and knows not
what he does or works. And for him who knows not what he makes, Sophia
creates all things and strengthens them. And when she had wrought it,
he thought that he had by himself accomplished the creation of the
cosmos; wherefore he began to say: “I am God, and beside me there is
none other.”
34. The Tetractys of Valentinus is then at once:--
“A certain source containing roots of eternal nature.”
(Pyth., _Carm. Aur._, l. 48.)
and Sophia by whom the psychic and material creation is now framed.
And Sophia is called Spirit, but the [Sidenote: p. 292.] Demiurge
Soul, and the Devil the ruler of the world, and Beelzebud that of the
demons. This is what they say, and beside this, they make their whole
teaching arithmetical; [and] as is said above, they (imagine) that
(the) thirty Aeons within the Pleroma again projected other Aeons by
analogy with themselves, so that the Pleroma may be summed up in a
perfect number. For, as it has been made clear that the Pythagoreans
divide (the circle) into 12 and 30 and 60 (parts) and that these have
also minutes of minutes, thus also do (the Valentinians) subdivide
the things within the Pleroma. But subdivided also are the things in
the Ogdoad, and there rules[133] (there) Sophia who is according to
them the Mother of All Living, and the Logos, the Joint Fruit of the
Pleroma, (and) there are (there) supercelestial angels, citizens of
the Jerusalem on [Sidenote: p. 293.] high, which is in heaven. For
this Jerusalem is Sophia. Without and her bridegroom the Joint Fruit
of the Pleroma. (But) the Demiurge also projected souls; for he is the
essence of souls. This is according to them Abraham and these are the
children of Abraham. Then, from the material and devilish essence the
Demiurge has made the bodies of the souls. This is the saying: “And
God made man, taking dust from the earth, and breathed into his face a
breath of life, and man became a living soul.”[134] This is, according
to them, the inward psychic man who dwells in the material body which
is material, corruptible, and formed entirely of devilish essence.
But this material man is (according to them) like unto an inn, or the
dwelling-place, sometimes of the soul alone, sometimes of the soul and
demons, and sometimes of the soul and logoi, who are logoi sown from
above in this world by the Joint Fruit of the Pleroma, and by Sophia,
and who dwell in the earthly body with the soul when there are no
demons dwelling with it. [Sidenote: p. 294.] This, he says, is what
was written in Scripture: “For this cause I bow my knees to the God
and Father and Lord of our Lord Jesus Christ, that God would grant you
that Christ should dwell in the inner man, that is the psychical not
the somatic, that you be strengthened to comprehend what is the depth”
which is the Father of the universals “and what is the breadth,”[135]
which is Stauros the Limit of the Pleroma, “or what the length,” which
is the Pleroma of the Aeons. Wherefore, he says, the psychic man does
not receive the things of God’s spirit; for they are foolishness unto
him. But foolishness, he says, is the power of the Demiurge, for he was
senseless and mindless and thought that he fashioned the cosmos, being
ignorant that Sophia, the Mother, the Ogdoad, wrought all things with
regard to the creation of the world for him who knew it not.
35. All the prophets and the Law, then, spake from the (inspiration of
the) Demiurge, a foolish god,[136] he says, being themselves foolish
and knowing nothing. Wherefore, he says, the Saviour declared: “All
who came before me are thieves and robbers.”[137] The Apostle also:
“The mystery which was not known to the first generations.”[138] For
none [Sidenote: p. 295.] of the prophets, he says, declared anything
concerning the things of whereof we speak; for all (of them) were
ignored in what was said by the Demiurge alone.[139] When, therefore,
creation was brought to completion,[140] and the revelation of the
sons of God, that is of the Demiurge, at length became necessary,
which had before been concealed, he says, the psychic man was veiled
and had a veil upon his heart. Then when it was time that the veil
should be taken away, and that these mysteries should be seen, Jesus
was born through Mary the Virgin[141] according to the saying: “(The)
Holy Spirit shall come upon thee”--the Spirit is Sophia--“and a power
of the Highest shall overshadow thee”--the Highest is the Demiurge.
“Wherefore that which is born from thee shall be called holy.”[142]
For He was born not from the Highest alone, as those created after
the fashion of Adam were created from the Highest, that is from the
Demiurge. But Jesus was the new man (born) from the Holy Spirit (and
the Highest),[143] that is from Sophia and the Demiurge, so that the
Demiurge supplied the mould and constitution of His body, but the Holy
Spirit supplied [Sidenote: p. 296.] His substance,[144] and thus the
Heavenly Logos came into being, having been begotten from the Ogdoad
through Mary. Concerning this there is a great enquiry among them and a
source of schisms and variance. And hence their school[145] has become
divided and one part is called by them the Anatolic and the other the
Italiote. Those from Italy, whereof are Heracleon and Ptolemy, say that
the body of Jesus was born psychic, and therefore the Spirit descended
as a dove at the Baptism, that is the Word which is of the mother
Sophia on high and cried aloud to the psychic man[146] and raised him
from the dead. This, he says, is the saying: “He who raised Christ from
the dead, shall quicken your mortal bodies (and your psychic).”[147]
For earth, he says, has come under a curse. “For Earth,” he says, “thou
art, and to earth thou shalt return.”[148] But those from the East,
whereof are Axionicus and Bardesanes,[149] [Sidenote: p. 297.] say that
the body of the Saviour was spiritual. For (the) Holy Spirit came upon
Mary, that is Sophia and the Power of the Highest is the demiurgic
art,[150] so that that which was given by the Spirit to Mary might be
moulded (into form).
36. These things then let these men enquire after in their own way,
and if they should happen to do so in any other, so let it be. But
(Valentinus) also says that as the false steps among the Aeons had been
put straight[151] and also those in the Ogdoad or Sophia Without, so
also were those in the Hebdomad. For the Demiurge was taught by Sophia
that he is not the only God as he thought, and that beside him there
is none other; but he knew better after being taught by Sophia. For
he was schooled by her and was initiated and taught the great mystery
of the Father and the Aeons and told it to none. This, he says, is
what he spake to Moses: “I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac
and the God of Jacob, and my name I have not announced to them,”[152]
that is to say: “I have not told the mystery nor have I explained who
is God, but I have kept to myself the mystery which I have heard from
Sophia.” It was necessary, then, that the things on high having been
put straight, in the same sequence,[153] correction [Sidenote: p.
298.] should come to those here. For this cause was Jesus the Saviour
born through Mary, that He might put straight things here, as the
Christ, who on high was projected by Nous and Aletheia, put straight
the passions of Sophia Without, that is, of the Ectroma. And again the
Saviour who was born through Mary came to set straight the passions of
the soul. There are, then, according to them three Christs, the one
projected by Nous and Aletheia along with the Holy Spirit; and the
Joint Fruit of the Pleroma the equal yoke-fellow[154] of Sophia Without
who is called and is herself a Holy Spirit (but) inferior to the first;
and third, He who was born through Mary for the restoration[155] of
this creation of ours.
37. I consider I have now by means of many (explanations) sufficiently
sketched the heresy of Valentinus, it being a Pythagorean one; and it
seems to me that the refutation of these doctrines by exposition should
stop. Plato, moreover, when setting forth mysteries concerning the
universe writes to Dionysius in some such way as this:[156]
“I must speak to you in enigmas, so that if the tablet [Sidenote: p.
299.] should suffer in any of its leaves on sea or land, whoso reads
may not understand.[157] For things are thus. As regards the king of
all, all things are his, and all are for his sake, and he is the cause
of all that is fair. A second (cause exists) concerning secondary
things and a third concerning those things which come third.[158]
But respecting the king himself there is nothing of this kind of
which I have spoken. But after this the soul seeks to learn of what
quality these are, since it looks towards the things which are germane
to itself, of which it has nought sufficiently. This is, O son of
Dionysius and Doris, your question as to what is the cause of all
evils. But it is rather that anxiety about this is inborn, and if one
does not remove it, one will never hit upon the truth.[159] But what
is wonderful about it, hear. For there are men who have heard these
things, able to learn and able to remember,[160] and who have yet grown
old while straining to form a complete judgment. They say that what
(once) appeared believable is now unbelievable, and that what was then
unbelievable was then the opposite. Looking therefore to [Sidenote:
p. 300.] this, beware, lest you repent what has unworthily fallen
from you. Wherefore I have written none of these things, nor is there
anything (upon them) signed Plato, nor will there ever be. But the
sayings now attributed to Socrates were (said by him)[161] when he was
young and fair.”[162]
(Now) Valentinus having chanced upon these (lines) conceived the king
of all, of whom Plato spoke, to be Father and Bythos and the primal
source of all the Aeons.[163] And when Plato spoke of the second
(cause) concerning secondary things, Valentinus assumed that the
secondary things were all the Aeons being within the limit of the
Pleroma and the third (cause) concerning the third things, he assumed
to be the whole arrangement without the limit and (outside) the
Pleroma. And this Valentinus made plain in the fewest words in a psalm,
beginning from below and not as Plato did from above, in these words:--
[Sidenote: p. 301.] “I behold all things hanging from air,
I perceive all things upheld by spirit,
Flesh hanging from soul,
Soul standing forth from air,
And air hanging from aether,
But fruits borne away from Bythos
But the embryo from the womb.”[164]
Understanding this thus:--Flesh is, according to them, Matter, which
depends from the soul of the Demiurge. But soul stands out from air,
that is the Demiurge from the Spirit outside the Pleroma. But air
stands out from æther, that is Sophia Without from that which is
within (the) limit and the whole Pleroma. Fruits are borne away from
Bythos, which is the whole emanation of Aeons coming into being from
the Father. The opinions of Valentinus have therefore been sufficiently
told.[165] It remains to tell of the teachings of those who have been
obedient to his school, another having different teaching.
3. _About Secundus and Epiphanes._[166]
[Sidenote: p. 302.] 38. A certain Secundus, who was born at the same
time as Ptolemy, says that there exist a right hand and a left hand
tetrad like light and darkness. And he says that the Power which fell
away and is lacking[167] came into being not from the thirty Aeons,
but from their fruits. But there is a certain Epiphanes, a teacher
of theirs, who says: “The First Principle[168] was incomprehensible,
ineffable and unnameable” which he calls Solitude[169] and that a Power
of this co-exists with it which he names Oneness.[170] The same Monotes
and Henotes preceded [but] did not send forth[171] an unbegotten and
invisible principle over all which he calls[172] a Monad. “With this
Power co-exists a power of the same essence with itself, which same
power I also name the One.” These four Powers themselves sent forth the
remaining projections of the Aeons. But others of them [Sidenote: p.
303.] again have called the first and primordial Ogdoad by these names:
first, “Before the Beginning,” then “Inconceivable,” third “Ineffable”
and the fourth, “Invisible;”[173] and (they say) that from the first
Proarche was projected in the first and fifth place Beginning;
from Anennoetos, in the second and sixth (place) Unrevealed, from
Arrheton in the third and seventh place, Unnameable and from Aoratos,
Unbegotten.[174] (This is the) Pleroma of the first Ogdoad. And they
will have these powers to have existed before Bythos and Sige. But yet
others understand differently about Bythos himself, some saying that he
is spouseless and neither male nor female, and others that Sige exists
beside him as his female and that this is the first syzygy.
4. _About Ptolemy._[175]
[Sidenote: p. 304.] 39. But the adherents of Ptolemy say
that he [Bythos] has two partners whom they call also (his)
predispositions[176] (_i. e._) Thought and Will. For he first had it
in mind to project something, and then he willed (to do so). Wherefore
from these two diatheses and powers, that is, from Ennoia and Thelesis
as it were blending with one another, the projection of Monogenes and
Aletheia as a pair came to pass. The which types and images of the two
diatheses of the Father came forth visible from the invisible, Nous
from Thelema[177] and Aletheia from Ennoia. Therefore also the male
image was born from the later-begotten Thelema, but the female from the
unbegotten Ennoia, because Thelema came into being like a power from
Ennoia. For Ennoia has ever in mind projection, but she is not able by
herself to project what she has in mind. But when the power of Thelema
[came into being later],[178] then she projected what she had in mind.
5. _About Marcus._[179]
40. And a certain other teacher of theirs, Marcus, an [Sidenote: p.
305.] expert in magic, depending now on trickery and now on demons,
leads astray many. For he says that there is in him the greatest power
from the invisible and unnameable places. And often he takes a cup,
as if consecrating it,[180] and prolonging the words of consecration,
causes the mixture to appear purple and sometimes red, so as to make
his dupes think that a certain grace has come down, and has given a
blood-like power[181] to the draught. But the rogue, though he formerly
escaped the notice of many, will, now that he has been refuted,[182]
have to stop. For he used secretly to insert a certain drug having the
power of giving such a colour to the mixture, and then to wait while
uttering much gibberish, until it dissolved by absorbing moisture and,
mixing with the draught, coloured it. And the drugs which can thus give
colour we have before described in our book against the Magicians,[183]
and have set forth how leading many astray, they utterly ruin them.
Which (last), if they care to consider more carefully what has been
said above, will know the fraud of Marcus.
[Sidenote: p. 306.] 41. Which (Marcus) also, mixing a cup by another
hand, (sometimes) gives it[184] to a woman to consecrate, while he
stands by her side holding a larger one empty: and when the dupe has
made the consecration, he takes (the cup) from her, and empties it into
the larger one and many times pouring (the contents) from one cup to
the other, says these words over them: “May the Incomprehensible and
Ineffable Charis who is earlier than the universals fill thy inner
man, and make abundant in thee the knowledge[185] of her, even as she
scatters the mustard seed upon the good ground!” And as he speaks
some such words over it, and (thereby) distracts the dupe and the
bystanders, so that he is considered a miracle-worker, he fills the
larger cup from the smaller so that it overflows. And we have set forth
the trick of this in the above-named book, where we have pointed out
many drugs which have the power of causing increase when thus mixed
with watery substances,[186] especially when mingled with wine: the
drug compounded beforehand, being hidden in the empty cup in such a
way that this may be exhibited as containing nothing, and being poured
backwards and forwards from one cup to the other, so as to dissolve the
drug by mixture with the water,[187] and so that [Sidenote: p. 307.]
when it is inflated by air, an overflow of the water comes about, and
it increases the more it is shaken, since such is the nature of the
drug. If, however, one lays aside the cup when filled, the mixture
will before long return to its former volume, the power of the drug
being quenched by the continued moisture. Wherefore he hurriedly gives
the bystanders to drink; and they being at the same time scared and
thirsting for it as something divine and mingled by a god, hasten to
drink.
42. Such like and other things, the deceiver undertakes to do. Whence
he was glorified by those he duped and was thought sometimes to
prophesy himself and sometimes to make others do so, either effecting
this by demons or by trickery as we have said above. Further he utterly
ruined many,[188] and led on many of them to become his disciples (by)
teaching them to be indifferent to sin[189] as free from danger (to
them) through their belonging to the Perfect Power and partakers of
the Inconceivable Authority. To whom also after baptism they promise
another which they call Redemption,[190] and thereby turn again to
evil those [Sidenote: p. 308.] who remain with them in the hope of
deliverance, (as if) those who had been once baptized might again
meet with acquittal. Through such jugglery,[191] they seem to retain
their hearers, whom, when they consider that they have been (duly)
indoctrinated and are able to keep fast the things entrusted to them,
they then lead to this (second baptism), not contenting themselves with
this alone, but promising them still something else, for the purpose
of keeping control over them by hope, lest they should separate from
them. For they mutter something in an inaudible voice, laying hands
on them for the receiving of Redemption which they pretend cannot be
spoken openly unless one were highly instructed, or when the bishop
should come to speak it into the ears of one departing this life.[192]
And this jugglery is practised so that they may remain the bishop’s
disciples, eagerly desirous to learn what has been said about the last
thing[193] whereby the learner would become perfect. Of which things I
have kept silence for this cause, lest any should think I put the worst
construction on them. For this is not what we have set before us, but
rather the exposure of whence they have derived the hints[194] from
which their doctrines have arisen.
43. For the blessed elder Irenæus having come forward [Sidenote: p.
309.] very openly for (their) refutation has set forth these baptisms
and redemptions saying in rounder terms what those who traffic[195]
with them do; and if some of these deny that they have thus received
them (it is because) they learn to always deny.[196] Wherefore we have
been careful to enquire very sedulously and to find out minutely what
they hand down in the first baptism as they call it, and what in the
second which they call Redemption: and no unutterable doing of theirs
has escaped us. But let us abandon[197] these things to Valentinus
and his school. Marcus, however, imitating his teacher himself also
concocts a vision, thinking thus to glorify himself. For Valentinus
claims that he himself saw a new-born infant, hearing whom he enquired
who he might be. And (the infant) answered declaring himself to be
the Logos. Thereupon (Valentinus) having added a certain tragic myth,
wishes from this to construct the heresy which he had already taken in
hand.[198] With like audacity, Marcus declares that the Tetrad came
before him in feminine shape; because, he says, the cosmos could not
bear its male form.[199] And [Sidenote: p. 310.] she disclosed to him
what she was, and the coming into being of all things, which she had
never yet revealed to any either of gods or men (but) announced it to
him alone, saying thus:--when the First (Being) who has no father,[200]
the Inconceivable and Substanceless One, who is neither male nor
female, willed the ineffable to be spoken and the invisible to take
shape, He opened His mouth and a Logos like unto Him went forth. Who,
standing beside Him, showed Him what He was, Himself having appeared in
the shape of the Invisible One. And the utterance of the name was on
this wise. He spoke the first word of the name which was the beginning
and was the syllable[201] of four letters. And He added to it the
second, and it also was of four letters. And He spoke the third, which
was of ten letters and then the fourth, and this was of twelve. There
came to pass therefore, the pronunciation of the whole name of thirty
letters, but of four syllables. But each of the elements has its own
letters[202] and its own character,[203] and its own pronunciation
and figures and images, nor is there any of them which perceives the
form of another. [Sidenote: p. 311.] Nor does it see that it is an
element, nor know the pronunciation of its neighbour; but each sounds
as if pronouncing the whole, and believes itself to be naming the
[universe].[204] For while each of them is a part of the universe, it
thinks its own sound names as it were the whole, and does not cease to
sound until it has arrived at the last single-tongued letter of the
last element. Then he says that the return of the universals (to the
Deity)[205] will come to pass when all things coming together into one
letter shall echo one and the same sound. He supposes that the likeness
of this sound is the Amen[206] which we speak in unison. But (he says)
that the vowels[207] exist to give shape to the substanceless and
unbegotten Aeon, and that they are those forms which the Lord called
angels, which behold without ceasing the Father’s face.[208]
44. But the names of the elements which are common (to all) and may be
spoken, he calls Aeons and Logoi and Roots and Seeds[209] and Pleromas
and Fruits. And (he says) [Sidenote: p. 312.] that every one of them
and what is special to each is to be comprehended as comprised in the
name of Ecclesia. Of which elements, he says, that the last letter of
the last element first sent forth[210] its own sound, the echo of which
going forth begot its own elements as being the images of the other
elements. Wherefrom, he says, both the things here below were set in
order and those which were before them were brought into being.[211]
He says nevertheless that the very letter the sound of which followed
immediately upon the echo below was taken up again by its own syllable
in order to fill full again the universe, but that the echo remained
in the things below as if cast outside it.[212] But the element itself
wherefrom the letter with its pronunciation came down below, he says,
is of thirty letters, and every one of the thirty letters contains
within itself other letters whereby the name of the letter is named.
And again others are named by other letters and yet others by these
others, so that the total comes out to infinity, if the letters be
written separately.[213] You will more clearly [Sidenote: p. 313.]
understand what has been said (if it be put) thus:--The element Delta
contains in itself five letters, the Delta, the Epsilon, the Lambda,
the Tau and the Alpha and the same letters (are written) by other
letters [214]. If then the whole substance[215] of the Delta comes
out to infinity, letters constantly giving birth to other letters and
succeeding one another, how much greater than that one element is the
sea of letters? And if the one letter be thus infinite, behold the
depth[216] of the letters of the whole name whereof the industry or
rather the idiot labour[217] of Marcus will have the Forefather to be
composed. Wherefore, (he says) the Father, knowing well His unconfined
nature, gave to the elements which He calls Aeons, the power for each
to send forth the pronunciation of his own name, whereby none is
capable of pronouncing the whole.
45. And [it is said that] the Tetrad having explained these things to
him, said:--“I desire now to show to thee Aletheia[218] herself; for
I have brought her down from the dwellings on high in order that thou
mayest behold her [Sidenote: p. 314.] unclothed and learn her beauty,
and may also hear her speak and admire her wisdom. See then the head
on high the first Alpha-Omega, and the neck Beta-Psi, the shoulders
(together with the hands) Gamma-Chi, the breast Delta-Phi, the waist
Epsilon-Upsilon, the belly Zeta-Tau, the privy parts Eta-Sigma, the
thighs Theta-Rho, the knees Iota-Pi, the legs Kappa-Omicron, the ankles
Lambda-Xi, the feet Mu-Nu.” Such is the body of Aletheia according
to Marcus, this the form of the element, this the impress of the
letter. And he calls this element Anthropos[219] and says that it
is the fountain of all speech and the principle of every sound, and
the utterance of everything ineffable, and the mouth of the silent
Sige.[220] “And this is her body. But do thou raising on high the
understanding of the intelligence,[221] hear the Self-Begotten and
Forefather Word from the lips of Truth.”
46. When (the Tetrad) had thus spoken (says Marcus), Aletheia looking
upon him and opening her mouth spake a word. But that word was a name
and the name was that which we know and speak (to wit) Christ Jesus,
having [Sidenote: p. 315.] spoken which, she straightway became silent.
And when Marcus expected her to say something more, the Tetrad again
coming forward said: “Holdest thou simple the word which thou hast
heard from the lips of Aletheia? Yet that which you know and seem to
have possessed of old is not the name. For you have its sound only,
and know not its power. For Jesus is an illustrious name having six
letters[222] invoked by all the Elect. But that which occurs among the
(five)[223] Aeons of the Pleroma has many parts (and) is of another
shape and of a different type, being known by those of (His) kindred
whose magnitudes[224] are ever with Him.”
47. “Know ye that the twenty-four letters among you are emanations
in the likeness of the Three Powers encompassing the universe[225]
and (the) number of the elements on [Sidenote: p. 316.] high. For
suppose that the nine mute letters[226] are those of the Father and of
Aletheia, because they are mute, that is, ineffable and unutterable;
and the semi-mute which are eight,[227] those of Logos and Zoe,
because they exist as it were half-way between the mute and those
which sound,[228] and they receive the emanation from those above
them and the ascension of those below; and the vowels--and they are
seven[229]--are those of Anthropos and Ecclesia, since it is the sound
going forth from Anthropos which has given form to the universals. For
the echo of the sound has clothed them with shape.[230] There are then
Logos and Zoe having the 8 and Anthropos and Ecclesia the 7 and the
Father and Aletheia the 9. But since the reckoning was deficient,[231]
He who was seated in the Father came down, having been sent forth from
that wherefrom he had been separated for the rectification of the
things which had been done, so that the unity of the Pleromas which is
in the Good One might bear as fruit one power which is in all from all.
And thus the 7 recovered the power of the 8, [Sidenote: p. 317.] and
the three places became alike in numbers, being three ogdoads. Which
three added together show forth the number of 24.” In fact the three
elements (which he says exist in the syzygy of the three powers, which
are 6, the flowing-forth of which are the 24 elements) having been
quadrupled by the Word of the Ineffable Tetrad make the same number
for themselves which he says is (that) of the Unnameable One. But they
were clothed by the 6 powers in the likeness of the Invisible One, of
the images of which elements the double letters are the likeness, which
added to the 24 elements by analogy make potentially the number 30.[232]
48. He says that the fruit of this reckoning and arrangement[233]
appeared[234] in semblance of an image (to wit) He who after the six
days went up to the mountain[235] as one of four [Sidenote: p. 318.]
persons and became one of six. Who came down and bore rule in the
Hebdomad, Himself becoming the illustrious[236] Ogdoad and containing
within Himself the whole number of the elements. Which the descent
of the dove coming upon Him at the baptism made plain, which (dove)
is Alpha and Omega, the number being plainly 801.[237] And because
of this Moses said that man came into being on the 6th day. But
according to the economy of the Passion on the 6th day, which is the
Preparation,[238] the last man appeared for the regeneration of the
First Man. Of this economy, the beginning and the end was the 6th
hour, wherein he was nailed to the Cross. For, (he says) that the
perfect Nous, knowing that number 6 possesses the power of creation and
regeneration[239] made apparent to the Sons of Light the regeneration
which had come through Him who appeared as Episemon. For the
illustrious number[240] when blended with the other elements completes
the 30-lettered name.
[Sidenote: p. 319.] 49. But He has made use as His instrument of
the greatness of the 7 numbers, in order that the Fruit of the
self-inspired (Council)[241] might be made manifest. Consider, he says,
this Episemon here present, which has taken shape from the Illustrious
One who has been, as it were, cut into parts and remains without. Who,
by His own power and forethought, by means of His own projection which
is that of the Seven Powers, imitated the Seventh Power and gave life
to the cosmos[242] and set it to be the soul of this visible universe.
He therefore uses this same work also as if it came into being by
Him independently; but the rest being imitations of that which is
inimitable minister to the Enthymesis[243] of the Mother. And the first
heaven sounds the Alpha, and that following it the Epsilon, and the 3rd
the Eta, and the 4th and middle one of the 7 the power of the Iota,
and the 5th the Omicron, and the 6th the Upsilon, [Sidenote: p. 320.]
and the 7th the Omega. And all the heavens when locked together into
one, give forth a sound and glorify Him by whom they were projected.
And the glory of the sounding is sent on high into the presence of the
Forefather[244]. And, he says, that the echo of this glorifying being
borne to the earth becomes the Fashioner and begetter of those upon the
earth. And there is a proof of this in the case of newly born children,
whose breath immediately they come forth from the womb, cries aloud
likewise the sound of each one of these elements. As then the Seven
Powers, he says, glorify the Word, so does the complaining soul among
infants. Wherefore, he says, David declared:--“Out of the mouth of
babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise.”[245] And again:--“The
heavens declare the glory of God.”[246] When also the soul is in pain
it cries aloud nothing else than the Omega in which it is grieved, so
that the soul on high recognizing its kindred may send it help.
[Sidenote: p. 321.] 50. And so far as to this.[247] But concerning the
beginning of the 24 elements, she speaks thus:--Henotes existed along
with Monotes[248] from which (two) came into being two projections:
Monad and the One which, as twice 2, became four. For twice 2 is 4. And
again the 2 and the 4 being added together the number 6 is manifested,
but when these 6 are quadrupled, 24. And these names of the first
Tetrad are understood to be the holiest of holy things, and cannot be
spoken, but are known by the Son alone. The Father knows also what
they are. Those named by Him in silence and faith are: Arrhetos[249]
and Sige, Pater and Aletheia. And the total number of this Tetrad is
24 elements. For Arrhetos has 7 elements, Sige 5[250] and Pater 5 and
Aletheia[251] 7. In like manner also the second Tetrad, Logos and Zoe,
Anthropos and Ecclesia, show forth the same number of elements. And the
spoken [Sidenote: p. 322.] name of the Saviour, that is Jesus, consists
of 6 letters; but His unspoken (name)[252] from the number of letters
taken one by one, is of 24 elements, but Christ (the) Son of 12.[253]
But the unspoken (element) in the Chreistos is of 30 letters and is
that of the letters in it, counting the elements one by one. For the
[name] Chreistos is of 8 elements: ([254] for the Chi[255] is of 3, and
the Rho of 2, and the Ei of 2 and the Iota of 4, the Sigma of 5 and the
Tau of 3, while the Ou is of 2 and the San of 3). Thus they imagine
that the unspoken element in “Chreistos” is of 30 elements. Wherefore
also, say they, He said “I am Alpha and Omega,” thereby indicating that
the Dove has this number, which is eight hundred and one.[256]
51. But Jesus has this ineffable generation.[257] For from the
Mother of the Universals the first Tetrad came forth, as if it were
a daughter, and the second Tetrad and an Ogdoad thus came into
being, wherefrom the Decad [Sidenote: p. 323.] proceeded. Thus an
Eighteen[258] came into being. Then the Decad having united with the
Ogdoad and making it tenfold, [the number] 80 [proceeded; and the
80][259] being again multiplied by 10, gives birth to the number 800.
So that the total number coming forth from the Ogdoad to the Decad is
8 and 80 and 800, which is Jesus. For the name Jesus according to the
number in the letters is 888. And the Greek Alphabet has eight monads
and eight decads and eight hecatontads indicating the cipher of the
eight hundreds as 88, that is the (word) Jesus (made up) from all the
constituent numbers. Wherefore also He is named Alpha and Omega as
signifying the birth from them all.
52. But concerning His fashioning[260] (Marcus) speaks thus: Powers
which emanated from the Second Tetrad [Sidenote: p. 324.] fashioned
the Jesus who appeared upon earth, and the angel Gabriel filled the
place[261] of the Logos and the Holy Spirit that of Zoe, and the
power of the Highest[262] (that) of Anthropos and the Virgin that of
Ecclesia. Thus by incarnation[263] a man was generated by Himself
through Mary. But when He came to the water, there descended upon
Him as a dove he who had ascended on high and had filled the 12th
number,[264] in whom existed the seed of those who had been sown
together[265] in Him, and had descended together and had ascended
together. But this Power which descended on Him, he says, was the seed
of the Pleroma having within it the Father and the Son, which through
them was known to be the unnamed power of Sige, and (to be) all the
Aeons. And that this was the Spirit which in Him spake through the
mouth of the Son, confessed Himself to be Son of Man, and manifested
the Father, yet veritably descended into Jesus (and) became one with
Him. The Saviour from the Economy,[266] destroyed death, they say,
but Christ Jesus made known the [Sidenote: p. 325.] Father. He says
therefore that Jesus was the name of the man from the Economy, but that
it was set forth in resemblance and shape of the Anthropos who was to
come upon Him; and that when He had received he retained the Anthropos
himself and the Father himself and Arrhetos and Sige and Aletheia and
Ecclesia and Zoe.[267]
53. I hope then that these things are clearly to all of sane mind
without authority and far from that knowledge which is according to
religion, being (in fact) fragments of astrological inventions and of
the arithmetical art of the Pythagoreans, as you who love learning
will also know from those their doctrines which we have exposed in the
foregoing books. But in order that we may exhibit them more clearly to
the disciples, not of Christ, but, of Pythagoras, I will also set forth
so far as can be done in epitome, the things which they have taken from
(this last) concerning the phenomena of the stars. For they say that
these universals are composed from a monad and a dyad, [Sidenote: p.
326.] and counting from a monad up to four, they bring into being a
decad. And the dyad[268] again going forth up to Episemon, for example,
two and four and six show forth the dodecad. And, again, if we count
in the same way from the dyad up to the decad, the triacontad appears,
wherein are the ogdoad and decad and dodecad. Then they say that the
dodecad through its containing the Episemon and because the Episemon
closely follows it, is Passion.[269] And since through this, the lapse
with regard to the 12th number occurred, the sheep skipped away and was
lost.[270] And in like manner from the decad: and on this they tell of
the drachma which the woman lost and lamp in hand searched for and of
the loss of the one sheep;[271] and having contrasted with this the
(number) 99, they make a fable for themselves of the numbers, since of
the 11 multiplied by 9 they make the number 99, and thanks to this they
say that the Amen contains this number.[272]
[Sidenote: p. 327.] And of another number they say this:--the element
Eta with the Episemon is an ogdoad, as it lies in the 8th place from
the Alpha. Then again counting the numbers of the same elements
together without the Episemon and adding them together as far as the
Eta, they display the number 30. For if one begins the number of the
elements with the Alpha (and continues) up to the Eta (inclusive) after
subtracting the Episemon, one finds the number 30.[273] Since then the
number 30 is made from the uniting of the three powers, the same number
30 occurring thrice made 90--for three times 30 are 90 [and the same
triad multiplied into itself brought forth 9]. Thus the ogdoad made
the number 99 from the first ogdoad and decad and dodecad. The number
of which (ogdoad) they sometimes carry to completion[274] and make a
triacontad and sometimes deducting the 12th number they count it 11 and
likewise make the 10th (number) 9. And multiplying and decupling[275]
[Sidenote: p. 328.] these (figures) they complete the number 99. And
since the 12th Aeon left the 11 [on high] and fell away from them and
came below, they imagine that these things correspond one to the other.
For the type of the letters is instructive. For the 11th letter is
the Lambda which is the number 30 and is so placed after the likeness
of the arrangement on high,[276] since from the Alpha apart from the
Episemon, the number of the same letters up to Lambda when added
together makes up the number 99.[277] But (they say) that the Lambda
which is put in the 11th place[278] came down to seek for what is like
unto it so that it may complete the 12th number, and having found it
did (so) complete it is plain from the very shape of the element.[279]
For the Lambda succeeding as it were in the search for what was like
unto itself and finding, seized it, and filled up with it the place of
the 12th element Mu, which is composed of two Lambdas.[280] Wherefore
they avoid by this gnosis the place [Sidenote: p. 329.] of the 99 that
is to say the Hysterema[281] as the type of the left hand, but follow
the One which added to the 99, brings them over to the right hand.
54.[282] But they declare that first the four elements which they say
are fire, water, earth (and) air, were made through the Mother and
projected as an image of the Tetrad on high. And reckoning in with
them their energies, such as heat, cold, moisture, and dryness they
exactly reflect the Ogdoad. Next, they enumerate ten powers, thus:
Seven circular bodies which they also call heavens, then a circle
encompassing these which they call the Eighth Heaven and besides these,
the Sun and Moon.[283] And these making up the number 10, they declare
to be the image of the invisible decad which is from Logos and Zoe.
And (they say) that the dodecad is revealed through the circle called
the Zodiac. For they declare that the twelve most evident signs shadow
forth the dodecad which is the daughter of Anthropos and [Sidenote: p.
330.] Ecclesia. And since they say the highest heaven has been linked
to the ascension of the universals, the swiftest in existence, which
(heaven) weighs down upon the sphere itself, and counterbalances by
its own weight the swiftness of the others, so that in thirty years
it completes the cycle from sign to sign--this they declare to be the
image of Horos encircling their thirty-named Mother.[284]
Again the Moon traversing the heavens completely in 30 days, typifies
(they say) by these days the number of the Aeons. And the Sun
completing his journey and terminating his cyclical return to his
former place in 12 months shows forth the Dodecad. And that the days
themselves, since they are measured by 12 hours, are a type of the
mighty[285] Ogdoad. And also that the perimeter of the Zodiacal circle
has 360 degrees and that each Zodiacal sign has 30. Thus by means of
the circle, they say, the [Sidenote: p. 331.] image of the connection
of the 12 with the 30 is observed. And again also they imagine that
the earth is divided into 12 climates, and that each several climate
receives a single power from the heavens immediately above it[286] and
produces children of the same essence with the power sending down [this
influence] by emanation [which is they say] a type of the Dodecad on
high.
55. And besides this, they say that the Demiurge of the Ogdoad on
high,[287] wishing to imitate the Boundless and Everlasting and
Unconfined and Timeless One and not being able to form a model of His
stability and permanence, because he was himself the fruit of the
Hysterema, was forced to place in it for rendering it eternal, times
and seasons and numbers, thinking that by the multitude of times he was
imitating the Boundless One. But they declare that in this the truth
having escaped him, he followed the false; and that therefore when the
times are fulfilled, his work will be dissolved.[288]
[Sidenote: p. 332.] 56. These things, then, those who are from the
school of Valentinus declare concerning Creation and the Universe,
every time producing something newer[289] (than the last). And they
consider this to be fructification, if any one similarly discovering
something greater appears to work wonders. And finding in each case
from the Scriptures something accordant with the aforesaid numbers,
they prate of Moses and the Prophets, imagining them to declare
allegorically the dimensions of the Aeons. Which things it does not
seem to me expedient to explain as they are senseless and inconsistent,
and already the blessed elder Irenæus has marvellously and painfully
refuted their doctrines. From whom also [we have taken] their so-called
discoveries and have shown that they, having appropriated these
things from (the) trifling[290] of the Pythagorean philosophy and the
astrologies, accuse Christ of having handed them down. But since I
consider that their senseless doctrines have been sufficiently set
forth, and that it has been already proved whose disciples Marcus and
Colarbasus[291] by becoming the successors of the school of Valentinus
(really) are, let us see also what Basilides says.[292]
FOOTNOTES
[Footnote 1: He of course refers to the Ophites, whence it is clear
that he included Justinus among them. His language may imply that all
these serpent-worshipping sects had been in existence some time before,
but did not begin to write their doctrines until they had taken on a
veneer of Christianity. This is very probable, but there is not as yet
any convincing proof that this was the case.]
[Footnote 2: Here again it is very difficult to say whether τῶν
ἀκολούθων means those who follow in point of time or in the pages of
the book.]
[Footnote 3: ὄργια, “secret rites” and ὀργή, “wrath,” is the pun here.]
[Footnote 4: Simon Magus, the convert of Philip the Evangelist, is
said by all patristic writers to be at once the first teacher and the
founder of all (post-Christian) Gnosticism; but until the discovery
of our text our knowledge of his doctrines hardly went further than
the statements of St. Irenæus and Epiphanius that he claimed to be the
Supreme Being. The only other light on the subject came from Theodoret,
who, writing in the fifth century, discloses in a few brief words the
assertion by Simon of a system of aeons or inferior powers emanating
from the Divinity by pairs. It is plain that in this, Theodoret must
have either borrowed from, or used the same material as, our author,
and it is now seen that Simon’s aeons were said by him to be six in
number, the sources of all subsequent being, and to be considered under
a double aspect. On the one hand, they were names or attributes of God
like the Amshaspands of Zoroastrianism or the Sephiroth of the Jewish
Cabala; and on the other they were identified with natural objects such
as Heaven and Earth, Sun and Moon, Earth and Water, thereby forming a
link with the Orphic and other cosmogonies current in Greece and the
East. We now learn, too, for the first time that Simon taught, like the
Ophites, that the Supreme Being was of both sexes like his antitypes,
that the universe consisted of three worlds reflecting one another,
and that man must achieve his salvation by coming to resemble the
Deity--a result which was apparently to be brought about by finding
his twin soul and uniting himself to her. None of these ideas seem
to have been Simon’s own invention, and all are found among those of
earlier or later Gnostics. Hence their appearance has here given rise
to the theories, put forward in the first instance by German writers,
but also adopted by some English ones, that the Simon of our text was
not the magician of the _Acts_ but an heresiarch of the same name who
flourished in the second century, and that the opponent of St. Peter
covers under the same name the personality of St. Paul. Neither theory
seems to have any foundation.]
[Footnote 5: τοῦ Γιττηνοῦ. Hippolytus’ usual practice is to use the
place-name as an adjective. The Codex has Γειττηνοῦ, Justin Martyr, “of
Gitto.”]
[Footnote 6: Probably Paramedes or Agamedes is intended. Cf.
Theocritus, _Idyll_, II, 14. The Paramedes or Perimedes there mentioned
was said to have been a famous witch, child of the Sun, and mistress of
Poseidôn.]
[Footnote 7: Acts viii. 9-14.]
[Footnote 8: _i.e._ Cyrene.]
[Footnote 9: This story in one form or another appears in Maximus
Tyrius (_Diss._ xxxv), Ælian (_Hist._, xiv. 30), Justin (xxi. 4), and
Pliny (_Nat. Hist._, viii. 16). The name seems to be Psapho.]
[Footnote 10: Cruice’s emendation. Schneidewin, Miller, and Macmahon
read τάχιον ἀνθρώπῳ γενομένῳ, ὄντως θεῷ, “sooner than to Him who though
made man, was really God;” but there seems no question here of the
Second Person of the Trinity.]
[Footnote 11: γέννημα γυναικός, “birth of a woman.”]
[Footnote 12: This is the evident meaning of the sentence. Hippolytus
ignores all rules as to the order of his words. Macmahon translates as
if Christ were meant.]
[Footnote 13: Deut. iv. 24, “consuming” only in A. V.]
[Footnote 14: Empedocles also. See Vol. I. pp. 40-41 _supra_.]
[Footnote 15: τὸ γράμμα ἀποφάσεως, _liber revelationis_, Cr., “the
treatise of a revelation,” Macmahon; as if it were the title of a book.
But the title of the book attributed to Simon is given later as Ἡ
ἀποφάσις μεγάλη, and there seems no reason why the second syzygy of the
series should be singled out in it for special mention.]
[Footnote 16: A phrase singularly like this occurs in the “Naassene”
author. See Vol. I. pp. 140-141 _supra_, where the “universals” are
enumerated.]
[Footnote 17: Or that which can only be perceived by the mind and that
which can be perceived by the senses.]
[Footnote 18: ἐπινοήσῃ. The sense of the passage seems to require
“perceive”; but the Greek can only mean “have in one’s mind.” Probably
some blunder of the copyist.]
[Footnote 19: Here, again, he has inverted the order. The hidden is the
intelligible, the manifest, the perceptible.]
[Footnote 20: The simile of the Treasure-house finds frequent
expression in the _Pistis Sophia_.]
[Footnote 21: Dan. iv. 12.]
[Footnote 22: ἐξεικονισθῇ. Macmahon translates “if it be fully grown”
on the strength apparently of a passage in the LXX; but the word is
used too frequently throughout this chapter to have that meaning here.]
[Footnote 23: Isa. v. 7. The A.V. has “the men” for “a man” and
“pleasant” for “beloved.”]
[Footnote 24: τοῖς ἐξεικονισμένοις.]
[Footnote 25: 1 Pet. i. 24, 25. The A.V. has “glory of man” for “glory
of flesh.”]
[Footnote 26: τέλειον νοερὸν. It is very difficult to find in English a
word expressing the difference between this νοερός, “intellectual,” and
νοητός, “intelligible.”]
[Footnote 27: Reading ἀπειράκις ἀπείρων (ὄντων) for the ἀπειράκις
ἀπείρως of Cruice’s text.]
[Footnote 28: Cruice’s emendation. The Codex has γνώμην ἴσην, “equal
opinion”? Schneidewin, νώματος αἶσαν.]
[Footnote 29: Here we have Simon’s cosmogonical ideas set out for the
first time in something like his own words. He seems to postulate the
existence of a Logos who makes the Six Powers or Roots and who is
himself present in them all. This does not appear to differ from the
view of Philo, for which see _Forerunners_, I, 174, or Schürer’s _Hist.
of the Jewish People_ there quoted.]
[Footnote 30: Νοῦς καὶ Ἐπίνοιαν, Φωνὴ καὶ Ὄνομα, Λογισμὸς καὶ
Ἐνθύμησις. The last name is the only one that presents any difficulty,
although every heresiologist but Hippolytus gives the female of the
first syzygy as Ἔννοια. Ἐνθύμησις is translated _Conceptio_ by Cruice,
“Reflection” by Macmahon. It seems as if it here meant “desire” in a
mental, not a fleshly, sense; but as this word has a double meaning in
English, I have substituted for it “Passion.” Hereafter the Greek names
will be used.]
[Footnote 31: This daring idea that the Logos, the chief intermediary
between God and matter in whom all the lesser λόγοι and powers were
contained, as Philo thought, must himself either return to and be
united to God or else be lost in matter and perish, is met with in one
form or another in nearly all later forms of Gnosticism. It is this
which makes the redemption of Sophia after her “fall” so prominent
in the mythology of Valentinus, while its converse is shown in the
First Man of Manichæism conquered by Satan and groaning in chains
and darkness until released by the heavenly powers and placed in
some intermediate world to wait until the last spark of the light
which he has lost is redeemed from matter. It seems to be the natural
consequence of Philo’s ideas, for which see Schürer’s _Hist. of the
Jewish People_ (Eng. ed.) II, ii. pp. 370-376. Whether these did not
in turn owe something to Greek stories of mortals like Heracles and
Dionysos deified as a reward for their sufferings is open to question.
Cf. _Forerunners_, vol. I.]
[Footnote 32: Justinus also used this quotation from Isaiah i. 2,
although in abbreviated form. See _supra_, Vol. I. p. 179. The A.V. has
“nourished and brought up” for “begotten and raised up,” and “rebelled
against” for “disregarded.”]
[Footnote 33: So Philo according to Zeller and Schürer, (_op. cit._, p.
374) understands by the Logos “the power of God or the active Divine
intelligence in general.” He designates it as the “idea which comprises
all other ideas, the power which comprises all powers in itself, as the
entirety of the supersensuous world or of the Divine powers.”]
[Footnote 34: Gen. ii. 2.]
[Footnote 35: The Sethiani also quote this. See _supra_, Vol. I. p.
165.]
[Footnote 36: So Ecclesiasticus xxiv. 9, makes Wisdom or Sophia say,
“He created me from the beginning before all the world,” and Proverbs
viii. 23, “I was set up from everlasting,” but neither passage is here
directly quoted.]
[Footnote 37: Gen. i. 2, “moved upon the face of,” A.V.]
[Footnote 38: ἔπλασε, “moulded.”]
[Footnote 39: That is, masculo-feminine.]
[Footnote 40: ἐξεικονισθῇ again. Like the Boundless Power or the Logos?]
[Footnote 41: Quotation already used by the Peratæ. See _supra_, Vol.
I. p. 148. For the Indivisible Point which follows, see the Naassene
chapter, Vol. I. p. 141 _supra_.]
[Footnote 42: Jer. i. 5. “Before I formed thee in the belly I knew
thee,” A.V.]
[Footnote 43: Gen. ii. 10, “to water the garden,” A.V. The four
divisions of the river have been already referred to in different
senses by Justinus and the Naassene author. So far from this repetition
arguing forgery, as contended by Stähelin, it seems only to show that
all these half-Jewish sects found in the traditions recorded in Genesis
an obstacle that they were bound to explain away if possible.]
[Footnote 44: ὀχετοὶ πνεύματος. Cruice and Macmahon translate πνεῦμα
by “spirit,” but it here evidently means “breath” from what is said
later about the nostrils. Cruice mentions that the ancients finding the
arteries empty at death concluded that they were filled by air during
life.]
[Footnote 45: The use of the first person shows that this is
Hippolytus’ and not Simon’s explanation.]
[Footnote 46: ἀναπνοή, “inbreathing.”]
[Footnote 47: Cruice’s emendation.]
[Footnote 48: A hiatus to be filled evidently with some reference to
the mouth. The whole of this passage seems corrupt. From what is said
about the bitterness of the water _Exodus_ should be taste, _Leviticus_
smell and _Numbers_ hearing.]
[Footnote 49: The simile as well as the phrase is to be found in
Aristotle. Cf. his _Organon_, c. viii.]
[Footnote 50: Cf. Isa. ii. 4; Micah iv. 3.]
[Footnote 51: Matt. iii, 10; Luke iii, 9.]
[Footnote 52: So the _Bruce Papyrus_ (ed. Amélineau, p. 231) says that
God when he withdrew all things into Himself, did not so draw “a little
Thought,” and from this one Thought all the worlds were made.]
[Footnote 53: οὐ κοσμεῖται, _non ordinaretur_, Cr., “is not adorned,”
Macmahon.]
[Footnote 54: Reading μητροπάτωρ for μήτηρ πατήρ. Cf. Clem. Alex.,
_Strom._, v. 14 for this word. The other epithets seem to cover
allusions to the Dionysiac, the Osirian and the Attis myths.]
[Footnote 55: ἡ μεταβλητὴ γένεσις, “changeable,” because those thus
born would have to go through many changes of bodies. The phrase is
used by the Naassene author.]
[Footnote 56: A play τροπή, “turning,” and τροφὴ, “nutriment.”]
[Footnote 57: καὶ ἔσται δύναμις ἀπέραντος, ἀπαράλλακτος αἰῶνι
ἀπαραλλάκτῳ μηκέτι γινομένῳ εἰς τὸν ἀπέραντον αἰῶνα; Cr., _et erit
potestas infinita, immutabilis in saeculo immutabili quod non amplius
fit per infinitum sæculum_; “and will become a power indefinite and
unalterable, equal and similar to an unalterable age which no longer
passes into the indefinite age,” Macmahon.]
[Footnote 58: Words in brackets Cruice’s emendation.]
[Footnote 59: παραφυάδες.]
[Footnote 60: δύναμις σιγή, a name compounded of two nouns like Pistis
Sophia. The practice seems peculiar to this literature.]
[Footnote 61: ἀντιστοιχοῦντες, a term used in logic for
“corresponding.” Simon here seems to think of the Egyptian picture of
the air-god Shu, separating the Heaven Goddess Nut from the Earth God
Seb, and supporting the first-named on his hands.]
[Footnote 62: So that the Supreme Being is of both sexes.]
[Footnote 63: This is the exact converse of what has just before been
said about the Father containing Thought within himself.]
[Footnote 64: καταγινομένη, “descending into” (women’s forms)?]
[Footnote 65: This sentence is taken _verbatim_ from Irenæus, I, 16, 2.]
[Footnote 66: ἐπὶ τέγους, literally, “on the roof.”]
[Footnote 67: διὰ τῆς ἰδίας ἐπιγνώσεως; _per suam agnitionem_, Cr.;
“thro’ his own intelligence,” Macmahon.]
[Footnote 68: Reading ἄρχοντες for the ἀρχαί of the Codex.]
[Footnote 69: This sentence also appears _verbatim_ in Irenæus, I, 16,
1.]
[Footnote 70: _i. e._ the prophets.]
[Footnote 71: The whole of this from the last quotation to the end of
the section is also from Irenæus, I, 16, 2.]
[Footnote 72: What these πάρεδροι οἱ λεγομένοι were is hard to say; but
one of the later documents of the _Pistis Sophia_ introduces a fiend in
hell as the “Paredros Typhon.” “Assessor” or “coadjutor,” the meanings
of the word in classical Greek, would here seem inappropriate.]
[Footnote 73: From the beginning of the section to here is from
Irenæus, I, 16, 3.]
[Footnote 74: That is, made up this doctrine.]
[Footnote 75: C. W. King in the _Gnostics and their Remains_ (2nd ed.)
thinks that the omitted word is Persia. There is evidently a _lacuna_
here, and perhaps a considerable one.]
[Footnote 76: Because his age made his pretensions to divinity absurd.
The story given after this directly contradicts all ecclesiastical
tradition which makes Simon perish by the fall of his demon-borne
car while flying in the presence of Nero and St. Peter in the Campus
Martius.]
[Footnote 77: The sources of this chapter are fairly plain. There is
little reason to doubt that Hippolytus had actually seen and read a
book attributed to Simon Magus and called the _Great Announcement_ from
which he quotes, after his manner, inaccurately and carelessly, but
still in good faith. Whether the work was by Simon himself is much more
doubtful, but it was probably in use by the sect that he founded, and
therefore represents with some fidelity his teaching. The style of it
as appears from the extracts here given is a curious mixture of bombast
and philosophical expressions, and bears a strong likeness to certain
passages in the chapters in the fifth book on the Naassenes and the
Peratæ. The other traceable source of the chapter is the work _Against
Heresies_ of St. Irenæus, of which the quotations here given go to
establish the Greek text. But intertwined with this, especially towards
the end of the chapter, is a third thread of tradition, quite different
from that used in the _Clementines_ and other patristic accounts of
Simon’s career, which cannot at present be identified.]
[Footnote 78: With Valentinus, we leave at last the tangled genealogies
and unclean imagery, as it seems to us, of the early traditions of
Western Asia, to approach a form of religion which although not
without fantastic features is yet much more consonant with modern
European thought. Valentinus was, indeed, with the doubtful exception
of Marcion, the first of heretics in the present acceptation of the
term, and many features of his teaching were reproduced later in the
tenets of one or other of the Christian sects. At first sight, the
main difference between his doctrine and that of the Catholic Church
consists in the extraordinary series of personified attributes of the
Deity which he thought fit to interpose between the Supreme Being
and the Saviour. This he probably borrowed either from the later
Zoroastrian idea of the Amshaspands or Archangels who surround Ahura
Mazda, or, more probably, from the _paut neteru_, (“company of the
gods”) of the Egyptian religion of Pharaonic times; and it has been
suggested elsewhere that he probably attached less importance to
dogmatism on the matter than the Fathers would wish to make out. But
Hippolytus’ account of his other doctrines show other divergences
from the Church’s teaching both graver and wider than we should have
gathered from the statements of Irenæus, Tertullian, or Epiphanius.
His view of the ignorance and folly of the Demiurge seems to be taken
over bodily from the Ophite teaching, and, as he identifies him by
implication with the God of the Jews, must logically lead to the
rejection of the whole of the Old Testament except perhaps the Psalms,
Proverbs, and the historical portions. He is also as predestinarian as
Calvin himself, for he assigns complete beatitude to the Pneumatics or
Spirituals only, while relegating the Psychics to an inferior heaven
and dooming the Hylics to complete destruction. Yet the class to which
each of us is assigned has nothing to do with conduct, but is in the
discretion of Sophia, the Mother of all Living.
The most marked novelty in Valentinus’ teaching, however, is the
cause, according to him, of the gift of this partial salvation to man.
This is not, as in the Catholic, the fruit of God’s love towards his
creature, but the last stage of a great scheme for the reconstruction
and purification of the whole universe. First, the Pleroma or Fulness
of the Godhead is purified by the segregation from it of the Ectroma or
abortion to which Sophia in her ignorance and ambition gave birth; then
the Ectroma herself is freed from her passions by the action of Christ
and the Holy Spirit, and made the Mother of Life; and finally this
material world, the creation of the God of the Jews, is to be purged
by the Divine Mission of Jesus from the gross and devilish elements
introduced into it by the ignorant clumsiness of the same God of the
Jews. But this theory was poles asunder from the geocentric ideas of
the universe then current among Greeks, Jews, and Christians alike, and
comes startlingly near the hypotheses of modern science on the very
low place of the earth and humanity in the scheme of things. Whence
Valentinus drew the materials from which he constructed his theory must
be reserved for investigation at some future date; but it is fairly
clear that some part of it was responsible for not a few of the tenets
of the Manichæism which arose some hundred years later to maintain a
strenuous opposition to the Catholic faith for at least nine centuries.
Finally, it may be said that Hippolytus also tells us for the first
time of the divisions among Valentinus’ followers and the different
parts played therein by Ptolemy, Heracleon and others, including that
Bardesanes or Bar Daisan whose name was great in the East as late as Al
Bîrûnî’s day.]
[Footnote 79: οὐκ ἀλόγως ὑπομνησθήσομαι.]
[Footnote 80: τὰ κορυφαιότατα τῶν αὐτοῖς ἀρεσκομένων.]
[Footnote 81: The Codex has Σολομῶν--evidently a copyist’s mistake. Cf.
Plato, _Timæus_, § 7.]
[Footnote 82: Not necessarily the Supreme Being. Clement of Alexandria,
_Paedagogus_, I, 8, says, “God is one, and beyond the One, and above
the Monad itself.”]
[Footnote 83: A fairly common form of Zoroaster. The quotation is
probably from the “Chaldean Oracles” so-called.]
[Footnote 84: Diogenes Laertius, Book VIII, c. 19 quotes from
Alexander’s _Successions of Philosophers_ that Pythagoras in his
Commentaries put first the monad, then the undefined dyad, and said
that from these two numbers proceeded, from numbers signs, from signs
lines, from lines plane figures, from planes solids, and from solids
perceptible bodies consisting of the four elements, fire, water, earth
and air.]
[Footnote 85: Miller would substitute νομιστέον for προστιθέμενον.]
[Footnote 86: These verses are said by Cruice to be in Sextus
Empiricus, but I have not been able to find them in any known writings
of that author.]
[Footnote 87: νοητά, as opposed to αἰσθητά.]
[Footnote 88: Cf. Matt. v. 18.]
[Footnote 89: These “accidents” are enumerated by Aristotle in his
_Metaphysics_, Book IV, and more briefly in his _Organon_. He does not
there acknowledge any indebtedness to Pythagoras.]
[Footnote 90: συνέχει.]
[Footnote 91: φιλία, not ἀγάπη. Macmahon translates “friendship.”]
[Footnote 92: _i. e._ the “Fashioner” = one who makes things out of
previously existing material, but does not create them _ex nihilo_.]
[Footnote 93: διανομή, a word peculiar apparently to the Pythagoreans.
Jowett translates it “regulation.”]
[Footnote 94: ἀπορῥαγάδας, a word unknown in classical Greek, which
should by its etymology mean “chinks” or “rents.” I have taken it as a
mistake for ἀπορῥήματα, which is found in Plutarch.]
[Footnote 95: Not Pythagoras, but Plutarch, _de Exilio_, § 11. He
attributes it to Heraclitus.]
[Footnote 96: The reference seems to be to the _Phaedrus_, t. 1, p. 89
(Bekker).]
[Footnote 97: Or “practise philosophy”: but Hippolytus always uses the
word with a contemptuous meaning.]
[Footnote 98: τὰς ἀρχάς. Evidently a mistake for τοὺς ἄρχοντας.]
[Footnote 99: Hippolytus in the interpretation of these sayings seems
to have followed Diogenes Laertius.]
[Footnote 100: Ἀριθμητής.]
[Footnote 101: So Shu the Egyptian God of Air was figured _between_
Earth (Seb) and Heaven (Nut).]
[Footnote 102: Roeper would read τὸν μέγαν ἐνιαυτὸν ἀπεργάζεται κόσμου,
“completes the Great Year of the world.”]
[Footnote 103: Ἄθηλυς, “without female.”]
[Footnote 104: Σιγή, “Silence.” Cf. the Orphic cosmogony which makes
Night the Mother of Heaven and Earth by Phanes the First-born, who
contains within himself the seeds of all creatures (_Forerunners_, I,
123).]
[Footnote 105: The attribution of this monistic doctrine to Valentinus
is found for the first time here. Irenæus and Tertullian both make him
say that Sige is the spouse of the Supreme Being.]
[Footnote 106: οὐσία. Here as elsewhere in this chapter, save where
an obvious pun is intended, to be translated as in text, and not
“substance,” which is generally the equivalent of ὑπόστασις.]
[Footnote 107: φιλέρημος γὰρ οὐκ ἦν.]
[Footnote 108: Νοῦν καὶ ἀλήθειαν. Here as elsewhere with the names of
Aeons, the English equivalent of the Greek name is first given, and, in
later repetitions, the Greek name transliterated into English.]
[Footnote 109: Λόγον καὶ Ζωήν.]
[Footnote 110: Ἄνθρωπον καὶ Ἐκκλησίαν.]
[Footnote 111: τέλειος used in its double sense of “perfect” and
“complete.”]
[Footnote 112: ὁ Λογος μετὰ τῆς Ζωῆς. The curious conception by which
the two partners in a syzygy are regarded as only one being is very
marked throughout this passage.]
[Footnote 113: ἀγεννησία; “unbegottenness” would be a closer
translation, but is uncouth in this connection. Cf. I, p. 147 _supra_.]
[Footnote 114: Βυθὸς καὶ Μίξις, Ἀγήρατος καὶ Ἕνωσις, Αὐτοφυὴς καὶ
Ἡδονή, Ἀκίνητος καὶ Σύγκρασις, Μονογενὴς καὶ Μακαρία. For the first
name Irenæus (I, i. 1, p. 11, Harvey), has Bythios, thereby making the
substantive into an adjective. So Epiphanius, _Haer._ XXXI (p. 328,
Oehler). This is doubtless correct.]
[Footnote 115: Παράκλητος καὶ Πίστις, Πατρικὸς καὶ Ἐλπίς, Μητρικὸς καὶ
Ἀγάπη, Ἀείνους καὶ Σύνεσις, Ἐκκλησιαστικὸς καὶ Μακαριστός, Θελητὸς καὶ
Σοφία. The Codex is here very corrupt, and for Ἀείνους we may, if we
please, read Αἰώνιος, “Everlasting,” and for Μακαριστός, Μακαριότης,
“Blessedness.” As the name of the male partner in each syzygy is an
adjective and that of the female a substantive it is probable that the
two are intended to be read together, as _e.g._ “Profound Admixture,”
and the like.]
[Footnote 116: Sophia, who plays a great part in the Jewish Apocrypha,
is almost certainly a figure of the prototypal earth like Spenta
Armaiti, her analogue in Mazdeism. Cf. the quotation from Genesis which
follows immediately.]
[Footnote 117: οὐσία. Here “substance” and “essence” would have the
same meaning, and the first-named word is used only to avoid ambiguity.]
[Footnote 118: Gen. i. 2.]
[Footnote 119: Exod. xxxiii. 3.]
[Footnote 120: Ἔκτρωμα.]
[Footnote 121: Ἐπιπροβληθεὶς οὖν ὁ Χριστὸς καὶ τὸ Ἅγιον Πνεῦμα. Christ
and the Holy Spirit are therefore treated as a syzygy and, as it were,
a single person.]
[Footnote 122: μονογενές.]
[Footnote 123: τὸ ὑστέρημα: “the Void,” the converse and opposite of
the Pleroma or “Fulness.”]
[Footnote 124: For this Platonic theory of “partaking,” see n. on I, p.
53 _supra_.]
[Footnote 125: So that the first work of the Mission of Jesus was the
freeing of the whole universe--not only our earth--from the evil which
had entered into it.]
[Footnote 126: ὑποστάτους οὐσίας; “underlying beings.” Here we have the
two ideas of hypostasis, or “substance” in its etymological meaning,
and “essence,” or “being,” side by side.]
[Footnote 127: ψυχικὴν οὐσίαν, _i. e._ the stuff of which the soul is
made.]
[Footnote 128: Ps. cxi. 10; Prov. i. 7; ii. 10.]
[Footnote 129: That is Jehovah, the God of the Jews. Hebdomad as
including the seven “planets.”]
[Footnote 130: Deut. ix. 3.]
[Footnote 131: The “below,” Ὑποκάτω, and “above,” ὑπεράνω, seem to have
become inverted; but as I am not sure whether this is the scribe’s
mistake or not, I have left the text as it is. If we consider (as we
must) that the heaven of Sophia is the highest and those of the seven
worlds below it like steps of a ladder, we have the conception of
Sophia, her son Jaldabaoth, and his six sons, current among the Ophites
as shown in Book V above. The figure of Sophia as a “day” is at once an
instance of the curious habit among the Gnostics of confusing time and
space, and an allusion to the O.T. name of “Ancient of Days.”]
[Footnote 132: I have sought to show elsewhere (_P.S.B.A._, 1901, pp.
48, 49) in opposition to the current explanations that this name,
properly written Beelzebuth, is at once a sort of parody of Jabezebuth
or “Jehovah (Lord) of Hosts,” and the name given to the “ruler of
demons” by the parallelism which, as in Zoroastrianism, makes each good
spirit have its evil counterpart of similar name.]
[Footnote 133: προβεβήκασιν. So in Homer (_Iliad_, VI, 125). Cruice
translates “provenerunt,” Macmahon reading apparently προβεβλήκασιν,
“there has been projected.”]
[Footnote 134: Gen. ii. 7.]
[Footnote 135: 1 Cor. ii. 14. In the preceding passage taken apparently
from Eph. iii. 14 either the Gnostic author or Hippolytus has taken
some strange liberties with the received Text, which see.]
[Footnote 136: It is plain, therefore, that the Valentinians rejected
these parts of the O.T.]
[Footnote 137: John x. 8.]
[Footnote 138: The τὸ μυστήριον τὸ ἀποκεκρυμμένον ἀπὸ τῶν αἰώνων καὶ
ἀπὸ τῶν γενεῶν of Coloss. 1. 26 seems to be what is aimed at.]
[Footnote 139: ἅτε δὴ ἀπὸ τοῦ Δημιουργοῦ λελαλημένα; “inasmuch as they
certainly had been uttered by the Demiurge alone,” Macmahon.]
[Footnote 140: τέλος ἔλαβεν, “received the finishing touch.”]
[Footnote 141: διὰ Μαρίας τῆς Παρθένου. A manifest allusion to the
well-known Gnostic doctrine that Jesus took nothing from His Mother
but came into being through her ὡς διὰ σωλῆνος, “as through a pipe or
conduit.”]
[Footnote 142: Luke i. 35. Ὕψιστος, “the Highest,” was according to M.
Camont (Suppl. _Rev. instr. publ. en Belgique_, 1897) the name by which
the God of Israel was known throughout Asia Minor in pre-Christian
times.]
[Footnote 143: καὶ τοῦ Ὑψίστου. These words are not in the Codex.]
[Footnote 144: τὴν δὲ οὐσίαν ... παράσχῃ. Again “essence” would
etymologically be the better word, but “substance” is used as more
familiar to the English reader.]
[Footnote 145: διδασκαλία. It is significant of the position held by
Valentinus’ teaching in the Christian community that the Valentinians
are often spoken of by the Fathers as a school of thought rather than a
schismatic Church like that founded by Marcion.]
[Footnote 146: γέγωνε τῷ ψυχικῷ. So in Manichæism, the Living Spirit
goes towards the Land of Darkness, where the First Man is entombed
after his defeat by Satan, and “cries in a loud voice, and this voice
was like a sharp sword and discovered the form of the First Man,” who
is thereupon drawn up out of the Darkness and raised to the upper
spheres where dwells the Mother of Life. Cf. _Forerunners_, II, pp.
294, 300, n. 1, and 302, n. 1, and Theodore bar Khôni and other authors
there quoted.]
[Footnote 147: Rom. viii. 11; the words in brackets are not in the
received text.]
[Footnote 148: Gen. iii. 19.]
[Footnote 149: So Cruice. Miller’s text has Ἀρδησιάνης.]
[Footnote 150: ἡ δημιουργικὴ τέχνη, “the process of fashioning.”]
[Footnote 151: διώρθωτο. So that Valentinus was the first to advance
the theory which we find later among the Manichæans that this earth
of ours, instead of being the centre of the universe, was in fact the
lowest and most insignificant of all the worlds, and that salvation
only came to it after the greater universe had been reformed--an
extraordinary conception on the part of one who must have held, like
his contemporaries, geocentric views in astronomy.]
[Footnote 152: Ex. vi. 2, 3.]
[Footnote 153: κατὰ τὴν αὐτὴν ἀκολουθίαν. Here as elsewhere in the
text, ἀκολουθία has the meaning of imitation.]
[Footnote 154: ἰσόζυγος.]
[Footnote 155: ἐπανόρθωσιν, “re-rectification”!]
[Footnote 156: What follows is from Plato’s Second Epistle, which is
thought to have been written after Plato’s return from his third voyage
to Syracuse, and is perhaps rather less suspect than the other Platonic
epistles. Yet the chances of interpolation are so great that no stress
can be laid on the genuineness of any particular passage.]
[Footnote 157: This passage alone is sufficient to make one doubtful
as to the Platonic authorship. If Plato really wanted to keep his
doctrine secret, the last thing he would have done would be to call the
attention of the chance reader to the fact.]
[Footnote 158: Burges translates: “But about a second are the secondary
things and about a third the third.”]
[Footnote 159: Nearly two pages are here omitted from the Epistle.]
[Footnote 160: Possibly an allusion to the Platonic theory that all
learning is remembrance.]
[Footnote 161: Τὰ δὲ νῦν λεγόμενα Σωκράτους. “Said of him” or “said by
him”? The passage is quoted by the Emperor Julian and by Aristides.]
[Footnote 162: So that Hippolytus’ attempt to show that Valentinus
plagiarized from Plato resolves itself into an imaginative
interpretation of a purposely obscure passage in an epistle which is
only doubtfully assigned to Plato. That Valentinus like every one
educated in the Greek learning was influenced by Plato is likely
enough, but that there was any conscious borrowing of tenets is against
probability.]
[Footnote 163: προαρχή τῶν ὅλων Αἰώνων.]
[Footnote 164: That Valentinus is said to have written psalms, see
Tertullian, _de Carne Christi_, I, c. xvii, xx, t. ii, pp. 453, 457
(Oehl.).]
[Footnote 165: Of the sources from which the author of the
_Philosophumena_ drew this account of Valentinus’ doctrine, much has
been written. Hilgenfeld in his _Ketzergeschichte des Urchristenthums_,
and Lipsius in the article “Valentinus” in Smith & Wace’s _D.C.B._,
agree that its main source is the writings of Heracleon. Cruice,
_Études sur les Philosophumena_, on the other hand, thinks it largely
composed of extracts from a work of Valentinus himself, entitled
_Sophia_. Salmon (_Hermathena_, 1885, p. 391), while not committing
himself to a definite pronouncement as to the writer quoted, says that
Hippolytus undoubtedly quoted from a genuine Valentinian treatise,
and that this last is above the suspicion of forgery with which he is
inclined to view other quotations in the _Philosophumena_.]
[Footnote 166: The notice of the followers, real or supposed, of
Valentinus which occupies the remainder of Book VI adds little to our
previous knowledge of their doctrines, being taken almost _verbatim_
from the work of Hippolytus’ teacher, St. Irenæus. It is noteworthy,
however, that although the Table of Contents promises us an account
of (among others) Heracleon, nothing is here said of him, although
that shrewd critic of the Gospels was thought worthy of refutation
by Origen some fifty years later. Yet Hippolytus mentions Heracleon
as being with Ptolemy a leader of the Italic School of Valentinians
which seems to dispose of the theory advanced by Lipsius (Smith &
Wace’s _D.C.B._, s. v. “Valentinus”) that Heracleon was the author
from whom Hippolytus took his account of Valentinus’ own doctrine. Of
Secundus nothing more is known than is set down in the text, while the
“Epiphanes” here mentioned is thought by some to be not a name, but
an adjective, so that the passage would read “a certain _illustrious_
teacher of theirs.” This was certainly the reading of Irenæus’ Latin
translator, who renders the word by “_clarus_.” Is this a roundabout
way of describing Heracleon? As to this see Salmon in _D.C.B._, s. v.
“Heracleon.”]
[Footnote 167: ἀποστᾶσαν καὶ ὑστερήσασαν. Evidently Sophia is meant.]
[Footnote 168: ἀρχή.]
[Footnote 169: Μονότης.]
[Footnote 170: Ἑνότης.]
[Footnote 171: προήκαντο μὴ προέμεναι, _protulerunt non proferendo ex
se_, Cr. So Irenæus, I, xi. 3, p. 104, H. In his note Harvey says that
the passage implies that Henotes and Monotes “put forth as the original
cause the _Beginning_, but so as that the _Beginning_ was eternally
inseparable from their unity.”]
[Footnote 172: Irenæus makes ὁ λόγος, “the Word,” the speaker. So
Tertullian, _adv. Val._, “_quod sermo vocat_.” But it seems more
natural to refer the speech to Epiphanes or “the Illustrious Teacher.”]
[Footnote 173: Προαρχή, Ἀνεννόητος, Ἄρῥητος and Ἀόρατος. The three
first names, however, are not in the text but are restored from
Irenæus, I, v. 2, p. 105, H.]
[Footnote 174: These four new names are: Ἀρχή, Ἀκατάληπτος, Ἀνωνόμαστος
and Ἀγέννητος.]
[Footnote 175: Of Ptolemy we know a little more than we do of Secundus,
a letter by him to his “fair sister Flora” being given by Epiphanius
(_Haer._ XXXIII.) which shows a system not inconsistent with that
described in the text. Unlike Valentinus himself he gives the Father a
spouse, or rather two.]
[Footnote 176: διαθέσεις, perhaps “states.” Cr. and Macmahon translate
“dispositions.”]
[Footnote 177: Hippolytus here suddenly changes from Thelesis to
Thelema. But there is no discoverable difference in the meaning of the
two words.]
[Footnote 178: Words in [ ] from Irenæus.]
[Footnote 179: This Marcus is practically only known to us from the
statements of Irenæus, from which the accounts in the text and in the
later work of Epiphanius are copied. Salmon’s argument (_D.C.B._,
s. v. “Marcus”) that Marcus taught in Asia Minor or Syria, and that
Irenæus himself only knew his doctrines from his writings and the
confessions of his Gaulish followers on their conversion to Catholicism
seems irrefutable. There is no reason to doubt Irenæus’ statement
here repeated that Marcus was a magician, nor the generally accepted
statement of modern writers on Gnosticism that he was a Jew. This
last deduction is supported by his use of Hebrew formulas, of which
Irenæus gives many examples, including one beginning “βασημαχαμοσση”
which appears to be “In the name of Achamoth,” the Hebrew or Aramaic
equivalent of the Greek Sophia. A more cogent argument is that his
identification of the Gnostic Aeons with the letters of the Greek
alphabet and their numerical values is, _mutatis mutandis_, exactly
correspondent to that of the so-called “practical Cabala” of the Jews
which was re-introduced into Europe in the tenth to twelfth centuries,
but which probably goes back to pre-Christian times and is ultimately
derived from the decayed relics of the Chaldæan and Egyptian religions.
On the other hand, Irenæus’ classing of Marcus among the “successors”
or followers of Valentinus is much more open to question. The reverence
he shows for the books of the Old Testament and for the Pentateuchal
account of the Creation, which is indeed the foundation of the greater
part of the system of the Cabala, is inconsistent with the views of
Valentinus, who as we have seen (n. on p. 33 _supra_) must logically
have rejected the inspiration of the Old Testament altogether. St.
Jerome (Ep. 75, _ad Theod._, I, 449), says indeed that Marcus was a
Basilidian, and although we have too little of Basilides’ own writings
to check this statement, it is not impossible that the nomenclature
of the Aeons, which is the chief point in which Valentinus and Marcus
coincide, was common to all three heretics, and perhaps drawn from a
source earlier than them all. The language of the formulas given by
Irenæus but not reproduced by Hippolytus, in several instances bear a
strong likeness to that of the _Great Announcement_ attributed in the
earlier part of this Book to Simon Magus.]
[Footnote 180: εὺχαριστῶν.]
[Footnote 181: αἱματώδη δύναμιν, “the potentiality of blood”?]
[Footnote 182: ἐλεγχόμενος. The word shows that by “refutation” the
author generally means “exposure.”]
[Footnote 183: He has not done so, unless in some part which has been
lost.]
[Footnote 184: ἐδίδου.]
[Footnote 185: Γνῶσις.]