1. NAASSENES 118
2. PERATÆ 146
3. THE SETHIANI 160
4. JUSTINUS 169
PHILOSOPHUMENA
INTRODUCTION
1. THE TEXT, ITS DISCOVERY, PUBLICATION AND EDITIONS
The story of the discovery of the book here translated so resembles
a romance as to appear like a flower in the dry and dusty field
of patristic lore. A short treatise called _Philosophumena_, or
“Philosophizings,” had long been known, four early copies of it being
in existence in the Papal and other libraries of Rome, Florence and
Turin. The superscriptions of these texts and a note in the margin of
one of them caused the treatise to be attributed to Origen, and its
_Edito princeps_ is that published in 1701 at Leipzig by Fabricius
with notes by the learned Gronovius. As will be seen later, it is by
itself of no great importance to modern scholars, as it throws no new
light on the history or nature of Greek philosophy, while it is mainly
compiled from some of those epitomes of philosophic opinion current in
the early centuries of our era, of which the works of Diogenes Laertius
and Aetius are the best known. In the year 1840, however, Mynoïdes
Mynas, a learned Greek, was sent by Abel Villemain, then Minister of
Public Instruction in the Government of Louis Philippe, on a voyage of
discovery to the monasteries of Mt. Athos, whence he returned with,
among other things, the MS. of the last seven books contained in these
volumes. This proved on investigation to be Books IV to X inclusive of
the original work of which the text published by Fabricius was Book
I, and therefore left only Books II and III to be accounted for. The
pagination of the MS. shows that the two missing books never formed
part of it; but the author’s remarks at the end of Books I and IX,
and the beginning of Books V and X[1] lead one to conclude that if
they ever existed they must have dealt with the Mysteries and secret
rites of the Egyptians, or rather of the Alexandrian Greeks,[2]
with the theologies and cosmogonies of the Persians and Chaldæans,
and with the magical practices and incantations of the Babylonians.
Deeply interesting as these would have been from the archæological and
anthropological standpoint, we perhaps need not deplore their loss
overmuch. The few references made to them in the remainder of the work
go to show that here too the author had no very profound acquaintance
with, or first-hand knowledge of, his subject, and that the scanty
information that he had succeeded in collecting regarding it was only
thrown in by him as an additional support for his main thesis. This
last, which is steadily kept in view throughout the book, is that the
peculiar tenets and practices of the Gnostics and other heretics of his
time were not derived from any misinterpretation of the Scriptures,
but were a sort of amalgam of those current among the heathen with the
opinions held by the philosophers[3] as to the origin of all things.
The same reproach of scanty information cannot be brought against the
books discovered by Mynas. Book IV, four pages at the beginning of
which have perished, deals with the arts of divination as practised by
the arithmomancers, astrologers, magicians and other charlatans who
infested Rome in the first three centuries of our era; and the author’s
account, which the corruption of the text makes rather difficult to
follow, yet gives us a new and unexpected insight into the impostures
and juggleries by which they managed to bewilder their dupes. Books V
to IX deal in detail with the opinions of the heretics themselves, and
differ from the accounts of earlier heresiologists by quoting at some
length from the once extensive Gnostic literature, of which well-nigh
the whole has been lost to us.[4] Thus, our author gives us excerpts
from a work called the _Great Announcement_, attributed by him to Simon
Magus, from another called _Proastii_ used by the sect of the Peratæ,
from the _Paraphrase of Seth_ in favour with the Sethiani, from the
_Baruch_ of one Justinus, a heresiarch hitherto unknown to us, and from
a work by an anonymous writer belonging to the Naassenes or Ophites,
which is mainly a Gnostic explanation of the hymns used in the worship
of Cybele.[5] Besides these, there are long extracts from Basilidian
and Valentinian works which may be by the founders of those sects, and
which certainly give us a more extended insight into their doctrines
than we before possessed; while Book X contains what purports to be a
summary of the whole work.
This, however, does not exhaust the new information put at our disposal
by Mynas’ discovery. In the course of an account of the heresy of
Noetus, who refused to admit any difference between the First and
Second Persons of the Trinity, our author suddenly develops a violent
attack on one Callistus, a high officer of the Church, whom he
describes as a runaway slave who had made away with his master’s money,
had stolen that deposited with him by widows and others belonging to
the Church, and had been condemned to the mines by the Prefect of
the City, to be released only by the grace of Commodus’ concubine,
Marcia.[6] He further accuses Callistus of leaning towards the heresy
of Noetus, and of encouraging laxity of manners in the Church by
permitting the marriage and re-marriage of bishops and priests, and
concubinage among the unmarried women. The heaviness of this charge
lies in the fact that this Callistus can hardly be any other than
the Saint and Martyr of that name, who succeeded Zephyrinus in the
Chair of St. Peter about the year 218, and whose name is familiar
to all visitors to modern Rome from the cemetery which still bears
it, and over which the work before us says he had been set by his
predecessor.[7] The explanation of these charges will be discussed when
we consider the authorship of the book, but for the present it may be
noticed that they throw an entirely unexpected light upon the inner
history of the Primitive Church.
These facts, however, were not immediately patent. The MS., written as
appears from the colophon by one Michael in an extremely crabbed hand
of the fourteenth century, is full of erasures and interlineations,
and has several serious lacunæ.[8] Hence it would probably have
remained unnoticed in the Bibliothèque Royale of Paris to which it was
consigned, had it not there met the eye of Bénigne Emmanuel Miller, a
French scholar and archæologist who had devoted his life to the study
and decipherment of ancient Greek MSS. By his care and the generosity
of the University Press, the MS. was transcribed and published in
1851 at Oxford, but without either Introduction or explanatory notes,
although the suggested emendations in the text were all carefully
noted at the foot of every page.[9] These omissions were repaired
by the German scholars F. G. Schneidewin and Ludwig Duncker, who in
1856-1859 published at Göttingen an amended text with full critical
and explanatory notes, and a Latin version.[10] The completion of this
publication was delayed by the death of Schneidewin, which occurred
before he had time to go further than Book VII, and was followed by the
appearance at Paris in 1860 of a similar text and translation by the
Abbé Cruice, then Rector of a college at Rome, who had given, as he
tells us in his _Prolegomena_, many years to the study of the work.[11]
As his edition embodies all the best features of that of Duncker and
Schneidewin, together with the fruits of much good and careful work of
his own, and a Latin version incomparably superior in clearness and
terseness to the German editors’, it is the one mainly used in the
following pages. An English translation by the Rev. J. H. Macmahon, the
translator for Bohn’s series of a great part of the works of Aristotle,
also appeared in 1868 in Messrs. Clark’s _Ante-Nicene Library_. Little
fault can be found with it on the score of verbal accuracy; but fifty
years ago the relics of Gnosticism had not received the attention that
has since been bestowed upon them, and the translator, perhaps in
consequence, did little to help the general reader to an understanding
of the author’s meaning.
2. THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE WORK
Even before Mynas’ discovery, doubts had been cast on the attribution
of the _Philosophumena_ to Origen. The fact that the author in his
_Proæmium_ speaks of himself as a successor of the Apostles, a sharer
in the grace of high priesthood, and a guardian of the Church,[12] had
already led several learned writers in the eighteenth century to point
out that Origen, who was never even a bishop, could not possibly be the
author, and Epiphanius, Didymus of Alexandria, and Aetius were among
the names to which it was assigned. Immediately upon the publication
of Miller’s text, this controversy was revived, and naturally became
coloured by the religious and political opinions of its protagonists.
Jacobi in a German theological journal was the first to declare that it
must have been written by Hippolytus, a contemporary of Callistus,[13]
and this proved to be like the letting out of waters. The dogma of
Papal Infallibility was already in the air, and the opportunity was at
once seized by the Baron von Bunsen, then Prussian Ambassador at the
Court of St. James’, to do what he could to defeat its promulgation. In
his _Hippolytus and his Age_ (1852), he asserted his belief in Jacobi’s
theory, and drew from the abuse of Callistus in Book IX of the newly
discovered text, the conclusion that even in the third century the
Primacy of the Bishops of Rome was effectively denied. The celebrated
Christopher Wordsworth, Bishop of Lincoln, followed with a scholarly
study in which, while rejecting von Bunsen’s conclusion, he admitted
his main premises; and Dr. Döllinger, who was later to prove the chief
opponent of Papal claims, appeared a little later with a work on the
same side. Against these were to be found none who ventured to defend
the supposed authorship of Origen, but many who did not believe that
the work was rightly attributed to Hippolytus. Among the Germans,
Fessler and Baur pronounced for Caius, a presbyter to whom Photius
in the ninth century gave the curious title of “Bishop of Gentiles,”
as author; of the Italians, de Rossi assigned it to Tertullian
and Armellini to Novatian; of the French, the Abbé Jallabert in a
doctoral thesis voted for Tertullian; while Cruice, who was afterwards
to translate the work, thought its author must be either Caius or
Tertullian.[14] Fortunately there is now no reason to re-open the
controversy, which one may conclude has come to an end by the death of
Lipsius, the last serious opponent of the Hippolytan authorship. Mgr.
Duchesne, who may in such a matter be supposed to speak with the voice
of the majority of the learned of his own communion, in his _Histoire
Ancienne de l’Église_[15] accepts the view that Hippolytus was the
author of the _Philosophumena_, and thinks that he became reconciled
to the Church under the persecution of Maximin.[16] We may, therefore,
take it that Hippolytus’ authorship is now admitted on all sides.
A few words must be said as to what is known of this Hippolytus. A
Saint and Martyr of that name appears in the Roman Calendar, and a
seated statue of him was discovered in Rome in the sixteenth century
inscribed on the back of the chair with a list of works, one of which
is claimed in our text as written by its author.[17] He is first
mentioned by Eusebius, who describes him as the “Bishop of another
Church” than that of Bostra, of which he has been speaking;[18]
then by Theodoret, who calls him the “holy Hippolytus, bishop and
martyr”;[19] and finally by Prudentius, who says that he became a
Novatianist, but on his way to martyrdom returned to the bosom of
the Church and entreated his followers to do the same.[20] We have
many writings, mostly fragmentary, attributed to him, including among
others one on the Paschal cycle which is referred to on the statue
just mentioned, a tract against Noetus used later by Epiphanius, and
others on Antichrist, Daniel, and the Apocalypse, all of which show
a markedly chiliastic tendency. In the MSS. in which some of these
occur, he is spoken of as “Bishop of Rome,” and this seems to have been
his usual title among Greek writers, although he is in other places
called “Archbishop,” and by other titles. From these and other facts,
Döllinger comes to the conclusion that he was really an anti-pope
or schismatic bishop who set himself up against the authority of
Callistus, and this, too, is accepted by Mgr. Duchesne, who agrees
with Döllinger that the schism created by him lasted through the
primacies of Callistus’ successors, Urbanus and Pontianus, and only
ceased when this last was exiled together with Hippolytus to the mines
of Sardinia.[21] Though the evidence on which this is based is not
very strong, it is a very reasonable account of the whole matter;
and it becomes more probable if we choose to believe--for which,
however, there is no distinct evidence--that Hippolytus was the head
of the Greek-speaking community of Christians at Rome, while his enemy
Callistus presided over the more numerous Latins. In that case, the
schism would be more likely to be forgotten in time of persecution,
and would have less chance of survival than the more serious ones of
a later age; while it would satisfactorily account for the conduct of
the Imperial authorities in sending the heads of both communities into
penal servitude at the same time. By doing so, Maximin or his pagan
advisers doubtless considered they were dealing the yet adolescent
Church a double blow.
3. THE CREDIBILITY OF HIPPOLYTUS
Assuming, then, that our author was Hippolytus, schismatic Bishop
of Rome from about 218 to 235, we must next see what faith is to be
attached to his statements. This question was first raised by the
late Dr. George Salmon, Provost of Trinity College, Dublin, who was
throughout his life a zealous student of Gnosticism and of the history
of the Church during the early centuries. While working through
our text he was so struck by the repetition in the account of four
different sects of the simile about the magnet drawing iron to itself
and the amber the straws, as to excogitate a theory that Hippolytus
must have been imposed upon by a forger who had sold him a number of
documents purporting to be the secret books of the heretics, but in
reality written by the forger himself.[22] This theory was afterwards
adopted by the late Heinrich Stähelin, who published a treatise
in which he attempted to show in the laborious German way, by a
comparison of nearly all the different passages in it which present
any similarity of diction, that the whole document was suspect.[23]
The different passages on which he relies will be dealt with in the
notes as they occur, and it may be sufficient to mention here the
opinion of M. Eugène de Faye, the latest writer on the point, that the
theory of Salmon and Stähelin goes a long way beyond the facts.[24]
As M. de Faye points out, the different documents quoted in the work
differ so greatly from one another both in style and contents, that
to have invented or concocted them would have required a forger of
almost superhuman skill and learning. To which it may be added that
the mere repetition of the phrases that Stähelin has collated with
such diligence would be the very thing that the least skilful forger
would most studiously avoid, and that it could hardly fail to put
the most credulous purchaser on his guard. It is also the case that
some at least of the phrases of whose repetition Salmon and Stähelin
complain can be shown to have come, not from the Gnostic author quoted,
but from Hippolytus himself, and that others are to be found in the
Gnostic works which have come down to us in Coptic dress.[25] These
Coptic documents, as the present writer has shown elsewhere,[26] are
so intimately linked together that all must be taken to have issued
from the same school. They could not have been known to Hippolytus or
he would certainly have quoted them in the work before us; nor to the
supposed forger, or he would have made greater use of them. We must,
therefore, suppose that, in the passages which they and our text have
in common, both they and it are drawing from a common source which can
hardly be anything else than the genuine writings of earlier heretics.
We must, therefore, agree with M. de Faye that the Salmon-Stähelin
theory of forgery must be rejected.
If, however, we turn from this to such statements of Hippolytus as
we can check from other sources, we find many reasons for doubting
not indeed the good faith of him or his informants, but the accuracy
of one or other of them. Thus, in his account of the tenets of the
philosophers, he repeatedly alters or misunderstands his authorities,
as when he says that Thales supposed water to be the end as it had
been the beginning of the Universe,[27] or that “Zaratas,” as he calls
Zoroaster, said that light was the father and darkness the mother of
beings,[28] which statements are directly at variance with what we
know otherwise of the opinions of these teachers. So, too, in Book I,
he makes Empedocles say that all things consist of fire, and will be
resolved into fire, while in Book VII, he says that Empedocles declared
the elements of the cosmos to be six in number, whereof fire, one
of the two instruments which alter and arrange it, is only one.[29]
Again, in Book IX, he says that he has already expounded the opinions
of Heraclitus, and then sets to work to describe as his a perfectly
different set of tenets from that which he has assigned to him in Book
I; while in Book X he ascribes to Heraclitus yet another opinion.[30]
Or we may take as an example the system of arithmomancy or divination
by the “Pythagorean number” whereby, he says, its professors claim to
predict the winner of a contest by juggling with the numerical values
of the letters in the competitors’ names, and then gives instances,
some of which do and others do not work out according to the rule
he lays down. So, too, in his unacknowledged quotations from Sextus
Empiricus, he so garbles his text as to make it unintelligible to us
were we not able to restore it from Sextus’ own words. So, again, in
his account of the sleight-of-hand and other stage tricks, whereby he
says, no doubt with truth, the magicians used to deceive those who
consulted them, his account is so carelessly written or copied that
it is only by means of much reading between the lines that it can
be understood, and even then it recounts many more marvels than it
explains.[31] Some of this inaccuracy may possibly be due to mistakes
in copying and re-copying by scribes who did not understand what they
were writing; but when all is said there is left a sum of blunders
which can only be attributed to great carelessness on the part of the
author. Yet, as if to show that he could take pains if he liked, the
quotations from Scripture are on the whole correctly transcribed and
show very few variations from the received versions. Consequently when
such variations do occur (they are noted later whenever met with), we
must suppose them to be not the work of Hippolytus, but of the heretics
from whom he quotes, who must, therefore, have taken liberties with
the New Testament similar to those of Marcion. Where, also, he copies
Irenæus with or without acknowledgment, his copy is extremely faithful,
and agrees with the Latin version of the model more closely than the
Greek of Epiphanius. It would seem, therefore, that our author’s
statements, although in no sense unworthy of belief, yet require
in many cases strict examination before they can be unhesitatingly
accepted.[32]
4. THE COMPOSITION OF THE WORK
In these circumstances, and in view of the manifest discrepancies
between statements in the earlier part of the text and what purports to
be their repetition in the later, the question has naturally arisen as
to whether the document before us was written for publication in its
present form. It is never referred to or quoted by name by any later
author, and although the argument from silence has generally proved
a broken reed in such cases, there are here some circumstances which
seem to give it unusual strength. It was certainly no reluctance to
call in evidence the work of a schismatic or heretical writer which
led to the work being ignored, for Epiphanius, a century and a half
later, classes Hippolytus with Irenæus and Clement of Alexandria as one
from whose writings he has obtained information,[33] and Theodoret,
while making use still later of certain passages which coincide with
great closeness with some in Book X of our text,[34] admits, as has
been said, Hippolytus’ claim to both episcopacy and martyrdom. But the
passages in Theodoret which seem to show borrowing from Hippolytus,
although possibly, are not necessarily from the work before us. The
author of this tells us in Book I that he has “aforetime”[35] expounded
the tenets of the heretics “within measure,” and without revealing all
their mysteries, and it might, therefore, be from some such earlier
work that both Epiphanius and Theodoret have borrowed. Some writers,
including Salmon,[36] have thought that this earlier work of our author
is to be found in the anonymous tractate _Adversus Omnes Hæreses_
usually appended to Tertullian’s works.[37] Yet this tractate, which is
extremely short, contains nothing that can be twisted into the words
common to our text and to Theodoret, and we might, therefore, assert
with confidence that it was from our text that Theodoret copied them
but for the fact that he nowhere indicates their origin. This might be
only another case of the unacknowledged borrowing much in fashion in
his time, were it not that Theodoret has already spoken of Hippolytus
in the eulogistic terms quoted above, and would therefore, one would
think, have been glad to give as his informant such respectable
authority. As he did not do so, we may perhaps accept the conclusion
drawn by Cruice with much skill in a study published shortly after the
appearance of Miller’s text,[38] and say with him that Theodoret did
not know that the passages in question were to be found in any work of
Hippolytus. In this case, as the statements in Book IX forbid us to
suppose that our text was published anonymously or pseudonymously, the
natural inference is that both Hippolytus and Theodoret drew from a
common source.
What this source was likely to have been there can be little doubt.
Our author speaks more than once of “the blessed elder Irenæus,” who
has, he says, refuted the heretic Marcus with much vigour, and he
implies that the energy and power displayed by Irenæus in such matters
have shortened his own work with regard to the Valentinian school
generally.[39] Photius, also, writing as has been said in the ninth
century, mentions a work of Hippolytus against heresies admittedly
owing much to Irenæus’ instruction. The passage runs thus:--
“A booklet of Hippolytus has been read. Now Hippolytus was a
disciple of Irenæus. But it (i. e. the booklet) was the compilation
against 32 heresies making (the) Dositheans the beginning (of them)
and comprising (those) up to Noetus and the Noetians. And he says
that these heresies were subjected to refutations by Irenæus in
conversation[40] (or in lectures). Of which refutations making also
a synopsis, he says he compiled this book. The phrasing however is
clear, reverent and unaffected, although he does not observe the Attic
style. But he says some other things lacking in accuracy, and that the
Epistle to the Hebrews was not by the Apostle Paul.”
These words have been held by Salmon and others to describe the
tractate _Adversus Omnes Hæreses_. Yet this tractate contains not
thirty-two heresies, but twenty-seven, and begins with Simon Magus to
end with the Praxeas against whom Tertullian wrote. It also notices
another heretic named Blastus, who, like Praxeas, is mentioned neither
by Irenæus nor by our author, nor does it say anything about Noetus or
the Apostle Paul. It does indeed mention at the outset “Dositheus the
Samaritan,” but only to say that the author proposes to keep silence
concerning both him and the Jews, and “to turn to those who have wished
to make heresy from the Gospel,” the very first of whom, he says, is
Simon Magus.[41] As for refutations, the tractate contains nothing
resembling one, which has forced the supporters of the theory to assume
that they were omitted for brevity’s sake. Nor does it in the least
agree with our text in its description of the tenets and practices of
heresies which the two documents treat of in common, such as Simon,
Basilides, the Sethiani and others, and the differences are too great
to be accounted for by supposing that the author of the later text was
merely incorporating in it newer information.[42]
On the other hand, Photius’ description agrees fairly well with our
text, which contains thirty-one heresies all told, or thirty-two if we
include, as the author asks us to do, that imputed by him to Callistus.
Of these, that of Noetus is the twenty-eighth, and is followed by those
of the Elchesaites, Essenes, Pharisees and Sadducees only. These four
last are all much earlier in date than any mentioned in the rest of the
work, and three of them appeared to the author of the tractate last
quoted as not heresies at all, while the fourth is not described by
him, and there is no reason immediately apparent why in any case they
should be put after and not before the post-Christian ones. The early
part of the summary of Jewish beliefs in Book X is torn away, and may
have contained a notice of Dositheus, whose name occurs in Eusebius and
other writers,[43] as a predecessor of Simon Magus and one who did not
believe in the inspiration of the Jewish Prophets. The natural place
in chronological order for these Jewish and Samaritan sects would,
therefore, be at the head rather than at the tail of the list, and if
we may venture to put them there and to restore to the catalogue the
name of Dositheus, we should have our thirty-two heresies, beginning
with Dositheus and ending with Noetus. We will return later to the
reason why Photius should call our text a Biblidarion or “booklet.”
Are there now any reasons for thinking that our text is founded on
such a synopsis of lectures as Photius says Hippolytus made? A fairly
cogent one is the inconvenient and awkward division of the books, which
often seem as if they had been arranged to occupy equal periods of time
in delivery. Another is the unnecessary and tedious introductions and
recapitulations with which the descriptions of particular philosophies,
charlatanic practices, and heresies begin and end, and which seem as
if they were only put in for the sake of arresting or holding the
attention of an audience addressed verbally. Thus, in the account of
Simon Magus’ heresy, our author begins with a long-winded story of
a Libyan who taught parrots to proclaim his own divinity, the only
bearing of which upon the story of Simon is that Hippolytus asserts,
like Justin Martyr, that Simon wished his followers to take him for
the Supreme Being.[44] So, too, he begins the succeeding book with the
age-worn tale of Ulysses and the Sirens[45] by way of introduction to
the tenets of Basilides, with which it has no connection whatever.
This was evidently intended to attract the attention of an audience so
as to induce them to give more heed to the somewhat intricate details
which follow. In other cases, he puts at the beginning or end of a
book a more or less detailed summary of those which preceded it, lest,
as he states in one instance, his hearers should have forgotten what
he has before said.[46] These are the usual artifices of a lecturer,
but a more salient example is perhaps those ends of chapters giving
indications of what is to follow immediately, which can hardly be
anything else than announcements in advance of the subject of the next
lecture. Thus, at the end of Book I, he promises to explain the mystic
rites[47]--a promise which is for us unfulfilled in the absence of
Books II and III; at the end of Book IV, he tells us that he will deal
with the disciples of Simon and Valentinus[48]; at that of Book VII,
that he will do the same with the Docetæ[49]; and at that of Book VIII
that he will “pass on” to the heresy of Noetus.[50] In none of these
cases does he more than mention the first of the heresies to be treated
of in the succeeding book, which the reader could find out for himself
by turning over the page, or rather by casting his eye a little further
down the roll.
Again, there are repetitions in our text excusable in a lecturer who
does not, if he is wise, expect his hearers to have at their fingers’
ends all that he has said in former lectures, and who may even find
that he can best root things in their memory by saying them over and
over again; but quite unpardonable in a writer who can refer his
readers more profitably to his former statements. Yet, we find our
author in Book I giving us the supposed teaching of Pythagoras as to
the monad being a male member, the dyad a female and so on up to the
decad, which is supposed to be perfect.[51] This is gone through all
over again in Book IV with reference to the art of arithmetic[52]
and again in Book VI where it is made a sort of shoeing-horn to the
Valentinian heresy[53]. The same may be said of the “Categories” or
accidents of substance which Hippolytus in one place attributes to
Pythagoras, but which are identical with those set out by Aristotle
in the _Organon_. He gives them rightly to Aristotle in Book I, but
makes them the invention of the Pythagoreans in Book VI only to return
them to Aristotle in Book VII.[54] Here again is a mistake such as a
lecturer might make by a slip of the tongue, but not a writer with any
pretensions to care or seriousness.
Beyond this, there is some little direct evidence of a lecture origin
for our text. In his comments on the system of Justinus, which he
connects with the Ophites, our author says: “Though I have met with
many heresies, O beloved, I have met with none viler in evil than
this.” The word “beloved” is here in the plural, and would be the
phrase used by a Greek-speaking person in a lecture to a class or group
of disciples or catechumens.[55] I do not think there is any instance
of its use in a _book_. In another place he says that his “discourse”
has proved useful, not only for refuting heretics, but for combating
the prevalent belief in astrology;[56] and although the word might be
employed by other authors with regard to writings, yet it is not likely
to have been used in that sense by Hippolytus, who everywhere possible
refers to his former “books.” There is, therefore, a good deal of
reason for supposing that some part of this work first saw the light as
spoken and not as written words.
What this part is may be difficult to define with great exactness;
but there are abundant signs that the work as we have it was not
written all at one time. In Book I, the author expresses his intention
of assigning every heresy to the speculations of some particular
philosopher or philosophic school.[57] So far from doing so, however,
he only compares Valentinus with Pythagoras and Plato, Basilides
with Aristotle, Cerdo and Marcion with Empedocles, Hermogenes with
Socrates, and Noetus with Heraclitus, leaving all the Ophite teachers,
Satornilus, Carpocrates, Cerinthus and other founders of schools
without a single philosopher attached to them. At the end of Book
IV, moreover, he draws attention more than once to certain supposed
resemblances in the views linked with the name of Pythagoras, to those
underlying the nomenclature of the Simonian and Valentinian heresies,
and concludes with the words that he must proceed to the doctrines of
these last.[58] Before he does so, however, Book V is interposed and
is entirely taken up with the Ophites, or worshippers of the Serpent,
to whom he does not attempt to assign a philosophic origin. In Book
VI he carries out his promise in Book IV by going at length into the
doctrines of Simon, Valentinus and the followers of this last, and
in Book VII he takes us in like manner through those of Basilides,
Menander, Marcion and his successors, Carpocrates, Cerinthus and many
others of the less-known heresiarchs. Book VIII deals in the same way
with a sect that he calls the Docetæ, Monoimus the Arabian, Tatian,
Hermogenes and some others. In the case of the Ophite teachers, Simon,
and Basilides, he gives us, as has been said, extracts from documents
which are entirely new to us, and were certainly not used by Irenæus,
while he adds to the list of heresies described by his predecessor,
the sects of the Docetæ, Monoimus and the Quartodecimans. In all the
other heresies so far, he follows Irenæus’ account almost word for
word, and with such closeness as enables us to restore in great part
the missing Greek text of that Father. With Book IX, however, there
comes a change. Mindful of the intention expressed in Book I, he here
begins with a summary of the teaching of Heraclitus the Obscure, which
no one has yet professed to understand, and then sets to work to
deduce from it the heresy of Noetus. This gives him the opportunity
for the virulent attack on his rival Callistus, to whom he ascribes a
modification of Noetus’ heresy, and he next, as has been said, plunges
into a description of the sect of the Elchesaites, then only lately
come to Rome, and quotes from Josephus without acknowledgment and with
some garbling the account by this last of the division of the Jews into
the three sects of Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes. Noetus’ heresy
was what was known as Patripassian, from its involving the admission
that the Father suffered upon the Cross, and although he manages to see
Gnostic elements in that of the Elchesaites, there can be little doubt
that these last-named “heretics,” whose main tenet was the prescription
of frequent baptism for all sins and diseases, were connected with the
pre-Christian sect of Hemerobaptists, Mogtasilah or “Washers” who are
at once pre-Christian, and still to be found near the Tigris between
Baghdad and Basra. Why he should have added to these the doctrines of
the Jews is uncertain, as the obvious place for this would have been,
as has been said, at the beginning of the volume:[59] but a possible
explanation is that he was here resuming a course of instruction by
lectures that he had before abandoned, and was therefore in some sort
obliged to spin it out to a certain length.