Pliny in his _Natural History_ also speaks of the Essenes; but adds

little to our knowledge, except the remark that it was the irksomeness

of this present life which in his opinion gave rise to the sect[476]. Of

the Christian heresiologists, Hippolytus in his _Philosophumena_ merely

repeats the statements of Josephus with the doubtfully accurate addition

that the Essenes believed in a final conflagration of the world[477] and

the eternal punishment of the damned; while Epiphanius in his _Panarion_

shows plainly that he had no first-hand knowledge of the Essenes and did

not understand the traditional accounts of the sect which must have been

extinct a long time before he wrote[478]. Porphyry in his treatise _on

Abstinence_ avowedly quotes from Josephus only[479].

We see, then, that all we really know about the Essenes is contained in

the accounts of Josephus and Philo; but on this slender foundation there

has been raised a vast superstructure of conjecture which the

unprejudiced reader will probably consider too heavy for its base. The

Essenes have been claimed by different writers as merely a strict order

of Pharisees, as Zoroastrians, and as Buddhists. It has been argued that

St John Baptist was an Essene and even that Jesus Himself belonged to

the sect[480]. A more probable theory is that the Essenes derived some

of their tenets from the Orphics, whose views were particularly

prevalent at Alexandria in the time of the early Ptolemies, as well as

in Asia Minor under the Seleucids. From the death of Alexander the Great

until that of Antiochus Epiphanes, Palestine was, as we have seen,

successively under the sway of these two rival dynasties, and it was the

rapid progress of the Jews towards Hellenization in culture, religion,

and morals that brought about the Maccabaean uprising, in connection,

with which we first hear of the Essenes[481]. Hence this is the time

when, if ever, we should expect the Orphic teaching to affect the Jews,

and it is difficult to see whence the Essenes derived their views of the

pre-existence of the soul—if that be indeed the construction to be

placed upon the scanty and obscure words of Josephus—except from

Orphism[482]. Save for this, however, there is no very cogent reason for

attributing to this Jewish sect an Orphic origin. The use of white

garments is in a hot climate too general a practice to be really

characteristic, while the abstinence from the procreation of children

and from food that has had life, although common to the Essenes and the

Orphics[483], may easily have come to the Jews from more quarters than

one. To the Essene refusal to take oaths and to engage in trade there is

no parallel whatever in the Orphic teaching[484].

But, although there is thus little sign of a direct connection of the

Essenes with the Orphics, there can hardly be any doubt that the Jewish

sect were Gnostics in the larger sense in which the word is used above.

The one distinguishing fact which stands out from Josephus’ account of

them is that they had secret doctrines of a kind differing from the

beliefs of the rest of the Jews. This is shown by the great pains taken

by them in the choice of neophytes, the “tremendous oaths” by which

they, who forbade swearing in general, enforced secrecy upon them, and

the prohibition to confide their teaching to any save by a long and

tedious process of initiation. The only hints we have as to the nature

of these doctrines are contained in Philo’s statement that they were

given to the enquiry into the being of God and the creation of the

universe, and in that of Josephus that the initiate into these secrets

was sworn “to preserve the books of the sect and the names of the

angels.” Dr Kohler and other Jewish writers see in Philo’s statement a

reference to the speculations of the later Jewish Cabala upon what is

there called “the Mystery of the Chariot” and “the Mystery of the

Creation[485]”; or in other words how the universe came forth from God

and how it is governed. Although the proof of this is slender, it seems

probable from the tendency of the whole of the Apocryphal literature of

the time which dealt principally with the same subjects. It is evident

that the Essene interpretation of the Old Testament, then recently made

familiar to the Jews by the Alexandrian translation into Greek known as

the Septuagint, must have been different in some respects from that of

the other Jews, and that it must have been in some way likely to shock

those who held by the traditional interpretation, as otherwise there

would have been no necessity for the Essenes to bind their neophytes to

so strict a secrecy. From Philo’s language on this point it would seem

that they interpreted both the Law and the Prophets in some non-natural

manner, and it is likely enough that this took the shape of the juggling

with the numerical values of the letters of which we find at least one

instance in the Revelation of St John, and to which we shall have to

return later[486].

What now can be said in explanation of Josephus’ statement that the

Essenes were sworn to secrecy as to the “names of the angels”? The

personal name of no angel appears in the Old Testament except in the

Book of Daniel, now generally admitted to have been written in the reign

of Antiochus Epiphanes, and there is on the face of it no reason why any

Jew should wish to keep those there given—Gabriel and Michael—secret.

But the knowledge of the name of an inhabitant of the spirit world was

at the time of which we are speaking held throughout the East to give a

magician full power over the being named, and this belief was universal

in the magic of all the nations among whom the Jews had found themselves

since the Captivity[487]. There is thus every likelihood that the

Essenes used “the names of the angels” for magical purposes, and this is

borne out by the tradition that it was as exorcists of demons and

healers of disease that they were afterwards celebrated[488]. The manner

in which these names were used may be judged from the tradition among

the Jews that each tribe or order of demons was governed by an angel,

and that his subjects were bound to obey upon being addressed by his

name[489].

It was partly, and perhaps mainly, from this sect of the Essenes that

there came, according to the general opinion of scholars, the apocryphal

or secret literature which, from the name of its principal book, may be

described under the generic name of Enochian[490]. In the _Book of

Enoch_ in its various forms was set forth a vast system of teaching on

matters which the Canonical books of the Old Testament hardly touch.

Here we have a complete cosmogony in which the mundane egg[491] of the

Orphics plays its part; and the duties of the innumerable orders of

angels and their connection with the heavenly bodies, the rebellion of

Satan and his host against God, the fall of the Watchers, or angels set

over the earth, through the beauty of mortal women, and the arrangement

of the different heavens and hells all find a place in it[492]. But it

also deals at great length with that Messianic hope which had for two

centuries been dangled by the Prophets before Israel, and which, thanks

to the materialistic sense in which it was interpreted by the vast

majority of Jews, was to lead directly to their extermination as a

nation[493]. The _Book of Enoch_ and its many successors and imitators

are full of predictions of the coming of a Messiah, who should lead the

chosen race to the conquest of the world, and, what was to them probably

an even more alluring prospect, to the overthrow and enslavement of all

the other peoples in it[494]. In the earlier parts of the Ethiopic

version—which is in itself, as Dr Charles has pointed out, but “a

fragmentary survival of an entire literature that once circulated under

the name of Enoch[495]”—it is described how

“the Holy and Great One will come forth from His dwelling, the God

of the world, and going from thence He will tread on Mount Sinai and

appear with His hosts, and in the strength of His might appear from

heaven[496].”

The judgment and destruction of all but the elect is next described, and

the hurling down of the sinning angels into “the abyss of fire,” while

the elect—that is, the Jews, or perhaps only the Essenes—are to live

among millennial blessings of a material kind and in the enjoyment of

universal peace[497]. This seems to represent fairly the earlier Essene

teaching upon this point, and there is reason to suppose that it was

written before the Maccabaean struggles, after which the decadence of

the Syrian Empire under Antiochus Epiphanes—hard pressed as he was by

the Romans on one side and the Parthians on the other—allowed the Jews

to obtain a temporary independence, and to set up a kingdom of their own

for the first and last time in their history[498]. But the wine of

military success and political independence proved too strong for the

heads of the race which had hitherto been the tributaries and subjects

of the Persian, the Greek, the Egyptian, and the Syrian Empires in turn,

and, like their kinsmen the Arabs of Mohammed’s time and the Mahdists in

our own, nothing less would now satisfy the fanatical among them than

universal domination. In the later parts of the same work, the

aspirations of the writers become more bloodthirsty and less spiritual,

and we hear of a time “When the congregation of the righteous will

appear[499],” a phrase which seems to cover the coming-forth of some

sect or society till then kept in seclusion. “Then,” it goes on to say,

“will the kings and the mighty perish and be given into the hand of the

righteous and holy[500].” In another part of the same book, we hear of

angels being sent to

“the Parthians and Medes, to stir up the kings and provoke in them a

spirit of unrest, and rouse them from their thrones, that they may

break forth from their resting-places as lions and as hungry wolves

among the flocks[501].”

These are to make one final assault upon Jerusalem, and

“to tread under foot the land of His elect ones and the land of His

elect ones will be before them a threshing floor and a path. But the

city of My righteous [_i.e._ Jerusalem] will be a hindrance to their

horses, and they will begin to fight among themselves, and their

right hand will be strong against themselves, and a man will not

know his brother, nor a son his father or his mother, till the

number of corpses through their slaughter is beyond count, and their

punishment be no idle one. And in those days Sheol will open his

jaws, and they will be swallowed up therein, and their destruction

will be at an end. Sheol will devour the sinners in the presence of

the elect[502].”

This, according to the author who has made the most exhaustive study of

the Enochian literature yet attempted, must have been written after the

spirit which had inspired the Maccabaean revolt had died away under the

tyranny and luxury of the later Jewish kings[503]. It seems very

difficult, in the face of the many interpolations that the documents

have undergone at the hands of Jewish and even Christian writers, to

decide how much of these prophecies can be attributed directly to the

sect of the Essenes; but there can be little doubt that they accurately

represent the hope of supremacy over the nations which they shared with

the Pharisees and the other fanatics among the Jewish nation. Only thus

can we explain the community of goods and the very un-Jewish contempt

for money-making which formed the most singular features of Essene

practice[504]. To those who expected to be immediately put in possession

of the whole earth all desire for worldly advancement must have been a

matter of indifference. A similar conviction led to the maintenance of

the same practice in the Christian Church so long as she continued to

believe in the nearness of the Parusia or Second Coming of her

Founder[505].

From this dream of universal dominion, nothing seemed able to arouse the

poorer Jews. In vain did the Sadducees, who comprised those of the

nation who had become rich either by trading with the Gentile or by

dependence on the luxurious Jewish Court, try to persuade the people

that they had better make the best of the Hellenist culture thrust upon

them than try to arrest its progress by fighting against powers that

would crush them like glass when once sufficiently provoked[506]. In

vain did the Syrian Empire, warned by the mistakes of Antiochus

Epiphanes in Hellenizing the Jews against their will, accord them the

largest possible religious liberty and even acknowledge their right to

self-government in exchange for tribute[507]. When the Romans, whom,

according to their own account, they had called in to protect them

against their Syrian overlords, destroyed once for all their chance of

remaining an independent state, they not only gave the Jews the fullest

liberty to practise their own religion, but set over them first a vassal

king and then tetrarchs of Semitic blood, who might be supposed to

moderate the too pronouncedly Western ideas of the Roman governor of

Syria[508]. But these concessions were no more effective in inducing the

Jews to settle down quietly as the peaceful tributaries of a great

empire than had been the severities of Antiochus. They seized every

opportunity to revolt, every time with the accompaniment of horrible

atrocities committed upon those unfortunate Gentiles who for a moment

fell into their power, until, some sixty years after the Destruction of

the Temple by Titus, Hadrian had to wage against them the awful war of

extermination which extinguished their nationality for ever. At the Fair

of the Terebinth, when every able-bodied Jew left alive in Palestine was

sold into slavery, the nation must have realized at last the vanity of

its dream[509].

During this time, that is to say, between the years 168 B.C. and 135

A.D., the flood of Apocalyptic literature never ceased to pour forth.

All of it was what is called pseudepigraphical, that is to say, the

books of which it was composed were falsely attributed to Enoch, the

sons of Jacob, Moses, Job, Ezra, Baruch, and other personages of the Old

Testament. Not all of these have come down to us, but a considerable

number of books have survived. The pre-Christian ones that we have,

included, beside the Ethiopian _Book of Enoch_ quoted above, the

_Testaments of the XII Patriarchs_, the _Psalms of Solomon_, and part of

the _Sibylline Oracles_. Later probably than the beginning of our era,

appeared the _Book of the Secrets of Enoch_, which Dr Charles thinks was

written in Egypt, the _Wisdom_ literature, certainly having the same

place of origin, the _Book of Jubilees_ or little Genesis, the

_Assumption of Moses_, the rest of the _Sibyllines_, the _Apocalypse of

Baruch_, the later books of _Maccabees_, and the _Fourth Book of

Esdras_[510]. One and all of these deal with the glories before the

Jewish nation, when by supernatural help it will be able to turn the

tables on its would-be civilizers, and one and all breathe the most

virulent hatred against every body who is not a Jew[511]. They show no

consensus of opinion as to the future lot of the Gentiles; for, while

some teach that the victories of the Messiah will end in their complete

annihilation, others declare that they will be preserved to become, as

Isaiah had prophesied, the servants and hand-maidens of the Jews, to

build up the walls of Jerusalem, and to be the herdsmen, ploughmen, and

vinedressers of Israel[512]. Others again, held that the Gentiles would

be hurled into Gehenna with the sinning angels[513]—even those who were

dead being raised again for that purpose—and would there be tormented

for ever in the presence of the Jews, who were to find one of their

chief pleasures in the sight of their sufferings[514].

“And I saw all the sheep that had been left, and all the beasts of

the earth, and all the birds of the heaven,”

says the pseudo-Enoch in a vision wherein he describes under this figure

the nations which had not been destroyed by the celestial hosts of the

Messiah,

“falling down and doing homage to those sheep [_i.e._ the Jews] and

making petition to and obeying them in every thing[515].”

For the world was made for the Jews and the perversity of the Gentiles

was divinely ordained for the express purpose that their “punishment”

might be great[516].

“All this I have spoken before thee, O Lord,” says the Apocryphal

Ezra, “because thou madest the world for our sakes. As for the other

people which also came of Adam, thou hast said that they are

nothing, but are like unto spittle, and hast likened the abundance

of them unto a drop that falleth from a vessel[517]. And now O Lord

behold, these heathen, which have ever been reputed as nothing, have

begun to be lords over us, and to devour us.... If the world now be

made for our sakes, why do we not enter into possession of our

world? How long shall this endure?” And then comes Yahweh’s answer:

“Behold I will call together all the kings of the earth to reverence

me, which are from the rising of the Sun, from the South, from the

East, and Libanus: to turn themselves one against another, and repay

that they have done to thee. Like as they do yet this day unto my

chosen, so will I do also, and recompense in their bosom[518].”

“After the signs have come of which thou wast told before,” says the

_Apocalypse of Baruch_, “when the nations become turbulent, and the

time of My Messiah is come, He shall both summon all the nations,

and some of them He shall spare and some of them He shall slay.

These things therefore shall come upon the nations which are to be

spared by Him. Every nation which knows not Israel, and has not

trodden down the seed of Jacob, shall indeed be spared. And this

because some out of every nation shall be subjected to thy people.

But all those who have ruled over you, or have known you, shall be

given up to the sword[519].”

So in the _Book of Jubilees_ we are told that God

“sanctified [Israel] and gathered it from amongst all the children

of men; for there are many nations and many peoples, and all are His

and over all hath He placed spirits in authority to lead them astray

from Him. But over Israel He did not appoint any angel or

spirit[520].”

As for the delight in the sufferings of the damned Gentiles it is

poetically expressed in the _Assumption of Moses_:

“For the Heavenly One will arise from His royal throne

And He will go forth from His holy habitation

And His wrath will burn on account of His sons

*****

And the horns of the Sun will be broken and he shall be turned into

darkness;

And the moon shall not give her light, and be turned wholly into

blood

And the circle of the stars shall be disturbed

*****

For the Most High will arise, the Eternal God alone,

And He will appear to punish the Gentiles

And He will destroy all their idols

Then thou, O Israel, shalt be happy

And thou shalt mount upon the neck of the eagle[521]

And the days of thy mourning will be ended

And thou shalt look from on high and shalt see thy enemies in

Gehenna,

And thou shalt recognize them and rejoice

And thou shalt give thanks and confess thy Creator[522].”

And in what has been called the Apocalypse of Salathiel, we hear that

the righteous Jews will “have joy in seven ways”:

“First of all they shall see with great joy the glory of him who

receives them up, for they shall rest in seven orders. The first

order because they have striven with great labour to overcome ‘the

innate evil thought[523]’ which was fashioned together with them,

that it might not lead them astray from life into death. The second

order, because they see the round in which the souls of the ungodly

wander and the punishment that awaits them...[524]”

A comparison of the dates of these documents lends little support to the

view that this hatred of the Gentiles was wrung from the Jews by

oppression; and there seems grounds for supposing that it had been

present to their minds ever since their return from the Captivity[525].

Tacitus was certainly justified when he speaks of the nation as animated

by bitter enmity against the rest of the human race[526].

How far the Essenes were responsible for the whole of this later

literature, it is now impossible to say. Nearly every one of the books

above quoted have been claimed as of Essene origin by some scholar or

another[527], and those who, like Dr Charles, are inclined to reduce

Essene influence upon them to a minimum, admit that considerable

interpolations have been made in most of the documents by Essene hands.

Moreover, all those books which do not purport to be by Enoch himself

either mention his name with peculiar reverence, or give the same

account of celestial physics and other matters as the Ethiopic Book of

Enoch, or quote it directly[528]. There seems, therefore, little doubt

that all this literature came forth from the same school, and that it

was directly or indirectly the result of Essene teaching.

A point more difficult to determine is how the Essenes managed to

reconcile their secret doctrines with the reverence for the Mosaic Law

and its promulgator which they undoubtedly professed[529]. There is no

direct evidence with regard to this save Philo’s remark quoted above as

to their allegorical interpretation of Scripture. This, too, may have

had its origin in Orphic practice, for we know that the Orphics were

accustomed to carry allegory so far as to both materialize their gods,

as when they spoke of Bacchus as Wine, and to deify abstractions, as

when they made hymns to Health, Peace and other abstract conceptions as

if they were actual persons[530]. But besides this, the Essenes probably

practised a mode of interpretation peculiar to themselves, which they

kept secret or confined to members of the sect. Something of the kind

was not unknown among the Greeks, for some of the Orphic gold plates

found in Magna Graecia are intended to be read acrostically[531], and

the Graeco-Egyptian magic papyri contain many instances of a similar use

of the Homeric poems by which they could be converted into an oracle or

fortune-telling book[532]. By such means any document can of course be

made to mean anything, and the Essenes seem to have added to this the

practice of isopsephism or regarding words as equivalent in sense which

had the same numerical value. The most familiar instance of this is in

the Revelation of St John where “the number of the Beast” is said to be

“the number of a man; and his number is six hundred threescore and six”;

or, in other words, Nero Caesar, whose name written in Hebrew letters is

equivalent to the number given[533]. In like manner we read in the _Book

of Enoch_, in the story of the sinning angels:

“This is the number of Kesbeêl, who showed the head of the oath to

the holy ones when he dwelt high above in glory, and its name is

Bêqâ. And this angel requested Michael to show him the hidden name,

that they might mention it in the oath, so that those who revealed

all that was hidden to the children of men might quake before that

name and oath. And this is the power of that oath, for it is

powerful and strong, and he placed this oath Akae in the hand of

Michael[534].”

From the context, it would appear that the words Akâe and Bêqâ both

cover the Tetragrammaton or four-lettered name of JHVH, by means of

which omnific word it is said the heavens and earth were created[535].

The mysterious name of Taxo given in the _Assumption of Moses_ as that

of the protagonist against Antiochus is doubtless to be interpreted in

some such fashion[536].

Of the history of the Essenes as an organized sect, we know hardly

anything. If we accept Josephus’ account of their numbers as relating to

his own time[537], it would seem that they were flourishing at the date

of the Destruction of the Temple under Titus. This event would probably

affect them little directly, because, as we have seen, they took no part

in the Temple worship; and, scattered as they were through the villages

of Palestine, they may easily have escaped the punishment meted out by

the Romans to those towns which were the strongholds of the rebellion.

But it is extremely improbable that they can have survived the War of

Extermination under Hadrian, when the partizans of the false Messiah

kept up a futile resistance in the country as well as in the towns, and

Hadrian’s general, Severus, had in consequence to lay the land

desolate[538]. Moreover, it is not improbable that the sect may have

taken an active part in the Revolt, which they may easily have looked

upon as the fulfilment of their Messianic hopes, and may thus have

perished under the stern measures of repression which the fanaticism and

barbarities of the rebels forced upon the conquerors. At any rate, we

hear little more of the Essenes after this date. But the fantastic

method of interpreting Scriptures which they practised and probably

introduced, lingered long, and, after being used by the earliest

Christian writers[539], was revived, as has been said, by the Cabalists

of the Middle Ages, and has even survived into our own time. It was

especially high in favour with those numerous bodies of heretics who in

the first three centuries of our era asserted that knowledge was the one

thing needful for salvation and were thus called, both by themselves and

by their opponents the Fathers of the Church, by the generic and

distinctive name of Gnostics[540].

Footnote 457:

So Euripides makes Iphigenia (_I. in Taur._ l. 400) say, “I think not

that any one of the gods is bad.” Cf. J. A. Hild, _Ét. sur les

Démons_, pp. 53, 136. In sharp contrast to the Jewish idea exemplified

in Deuteronomy of a god whose “name is Jealous” is Plato’s description

of the Creator in the _Timæus_ (40 C.), “He is not jealous, for he is

good, and in him that is good no jealousy exists.”

Footnote 458:

It should be noted that what is said here of the Jews applies not to

the Hebrew race in general, but only to those members of it who

settled in Palestine after the return from the Captivity. Winwood

Reade puts the matter with no less truth than point when he says

(_Martyrdom of Man_, p. 203): “The people who did return were chiefly

the fanatics, the clergy, and the paupers. The harvest ... was worthy

of the seed.”

Footnote 459:

R. H. Charles, _A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life_

(Jowett Lectures), 1899, pp. 33-50, and authorities there quoted.

Footnote 460:

J. P. Mahaffy, _Empire of the Ptolemies_, pp. 85, 86.

Footnote 461:

Droysen, _Hellénisme_, II. p. 155.

Footnote 462:

Mahaffy, _op. cit._ p. 87 and n. 1; _ibid._ p. 293 and nn. 1 and 2.

Footnote 463:

W. D. Morrison, _Jews under Roman Rule_, pp. 5, 6.

Footnote 464:

Jos. _de Bell._ Bk II. c. 8, _passim_.

Footnote 465:

Or “the Pious.” See Morrison, _op. cit._ p. 327; A. Jülicher in

_Encyc. Bibl._ _s.v._ Essenes, col. 1397, n. 1.

Footnote 466:

There was, says Josephus, _loc. cit._ § 13, another order of Essenes

which married and had children. The reason given for the celibacy of

the first order is not the Orphic one, _ibid._ § 2.

Footnote 467:

Cf. the _Agapae_ or love-feasts of the Greek _thiasi_ and the

Christian Church. There is no authority, however, for supposing that

the meal was regarded by the Essenes as a sacrifice.

Footnote 468:

The girdle has been thought to be identical with the _kosti_ or sacred

thread of the Parsis. The use of the hatchet or pick was to bury the

_ejecta_, perhaps for sanitary reasons. The Essenes were said to be

further divided into four classes (Josephus, _loc. cit._ § 10), but

Josephus does not say what these classes were, and it is doubtful

whether there is any foundation for the statement.

Footnote 469:

_Ibid._ § 7. From the context, it would seem that “robbery” here means

the attempt to obtain possession of the secrets of the order by

stealth. In an earlier part of the same section the neophyte is said

to be sworn to “keep his hands clear from theft, and his soul from

unlawful gains.”

Footnote 470:

_I.e._ by sexual desire. The same idea is met with in the doctrines of

Simon Magus, see Chap. VI, _infra_, and in many other sects. Cf.

Cumont, _Recherches sur le Manichéisme_, Bruxelles, 1908, pt I. Appx

1, “La Séduction des Archontes” for particulars.

Footnote 471:

Dr Kohler, apparently a Rabbi of New York, gives other particulars of

the Essenic initiation, including a song describing Heaven and Hell.

This he takes from the _Testament of Job_ described by him in the

Festschrift called Kohut’s _Semitic Studies_, Berlin, 1897, pp. 265

_sqq._ Among other things, he thinks the initiate was told that Satan

was the cosmocrator, or ruler of the world, and that the sacred girdle

was an amulet which would enable him both to defy Satan’s snares, and

to see the wonders of the world of angels. But I do not see that he

brings forward any proof that either this book or what he calls the

whole Job literature is attributable to the Essenes.

Footnote 472:

Joseph. _Antiq._ Bk XIII. c. 5, § 9.

Footnote 473:

_Id._ _op. cit._ Bk XVIII. c. 1, § 5.

Footnote 474:

Their supposed sun-worship seems to resolve itself into the usual

Jewish prayer at dawn, see Cheyne, _Jewish Religious Life after

Exile_, New York, 1898, note on p. 251, and Jülicher, _Encyc. Bibl._

_s.v._ Essenes.

Footnote 475:

Philo Judaeus, _Quod Omnis Probus Liber_, c. XII.; _id._ _Apologia_ in

Eusebius, _Praep. Evang._ Bk VIII. c. 13. The authenticity of both

works has been attacked (for the controversy _v._ Morrison, _op. cit._

p. 347, n. 2) with some success. While therefore there can be no doubt

that they are from the pen of some of Philo’s school, it is not

impossible that they may be later than Josephus and have copied his

statements.

Footnote 476:

Pliny, _Hist. Nat._ Bk V. c. 15: _In diem ex aequo convenarum turba

renascitur large frequentantibus, quos vita fessos ad mores eorum

fortunae fluctus agitat._

Footnote 477:

Hippolytus, _Philosophumena_, Bk IX. c. 27, pp. 465, 466, of Cruice.

Later, he attributes the same doctrine to the Pharisees. His desire to

show that in both cases it was derived by the Jews from the

Pythagoreans or the Stoics is manifest.

Footnote 478:

Epiphanius, _Panar._ Bk I. t. I. Haer. X. c. 1 (pp. 75, 76 of Oehler,

vol. II. pt 1). Epiphanius makes them a Samaritan sect.

Footnote 479:

Porphyrius, _de Abstinentia_, Bk IV.

Footnote 480:

Jülicher in _Encyc. Bibl._ _ubi cit._ and Ritschl and Lucius there

quoted; J. B. Lightfoot, _Epistles to Colossians and to Philemon_,

1876, pp. 82-93, 348-419, and Hilgenfeld, _Die Ketzergeschichte des

Urchristenthums_, Leipzig, 1884, p. 156; Arthur Lillie, _Buddhism in

Christendom_, 1887, _passim_; _id._ _Buddha and Buddhism_, Edinburgh,

1900, pp. 159 _sqq._ Buddhism is however posterior in time to Orphism,

as Buddha did not die till B.C. 483 (see Fleet in _J.R.A.S._ 1909, p.

22), which was some years after the break-up of the Pythagorean

school.

Footnote 481:

See note 1 p. 154, _supra_.

Footnote 482:

There is no evidence of a belief in the pre-existence of the soul in

Persian religion until the rise of the worship of Mithras in the Ist

century B.C. See Chap. XII, _infra_. Marshall (Hastings’ _Dict. of

Bible_, _s.v._ Pre-existence) would find proof of the doctrine among

the Jews in the Book of Wisdom and Philo. Both are much later than

Orphism.

Footnote 483:

But see note 2 p. 152, _supra_. Jewish priests after the Exile were

forbidden to wear wool or to touch corpses, prohibitions which have an

Orphic twang. See Ezekiel xliv. 17, 23.

Footnote 484:

So far from despising wealth, many of the Orphic Hymns pray for

riches. Cf. Hymns X. XIII. XIV. XIX. XL. etc. in Abel’s _Orphica_.

Footnote 485:

K. Kohler, _Testament of Job_, in Kohut’s _Semitic Studies_, Berlin,

1897, pp. 281, 282; Isidore Loeb in _La Grande Encyclopédie_, Paris,

_s.v._ La Cabbale Juive, p. 587.

Footnote 486:

Rev. xiii. 18. A. Hausrath, _History of New Testament Times_ (Eng.

ed.), 1878, vol. I. pp. 113-117, gives all the different processes of

what is called the “Practical” Cabala with illustrations. Cf. Ad.

Franck, _La Kabbale_, Paris, 1843, p. 167, n. 2.

Footnote 487:

J. G. Frazer, _The Golden Bough_, 3rd ed. pt II. vol. I. pp. 318-334,

gives references to, I think, all the authorities for this belief,

which even at the present day is universal among primitive people.

Footnote 488:

Morrison, _op. cit._ p. 338, for authorities. Exorcism for the healing

of disease followed naturally from their demonology, which taught that

diseases were caused by demons. See Hausrath, _Hist. of N. T. Times_

(Eng. ed.), I. p. 127.

Footnote 489:

Hausrath, _op. cit._ I. pp. 124, 125; _Clementine Homilies_, Bk V. c.

5.

Footnote 490:

F. C. Porter in Hastings’ _Dict. of Bible_, _s.v._ Apocrypha, and

Wellhausen as there quoted. A list of the books comprised in the

expression used in the text with conjectural dates and authorship is

given by R. H. Charles in the same work, _s.v._ Apocalyptical

Literature. Cf. article under same heading (also by Charles) in

_Encyclopaedia Biblica_. Prof. Charles is less inclined than earlier

writers (_e.g._ Lightfoot and Kohler, _opp. cit._) to credit the

Essenes with the composition of the whole of this literature; but he

admits that part of the _Book of Enoch_, chap. cviii. 1-15, is by

Essene hands. The other parts attributed to the Essenes by Sieffert,

Tideman, and Cheyne are indicated by him in _The Book of Enoch_,

Oxford, 1893, pp. 13, 14, 21.

Footnote 491:

_The Book of the Secrets of Enoch_ (Morfill and Charles trans.),

Oxford, 1896, p. 32.

Footnote 492:

Charles, _Book of Enoch_, _cit. sup._ pp. 24-33.

Footnote 493:

_Id._ _op. cit._ chap. xc. 28-38; cf. _id._ _Crit. Hist._ p. 192.

Footnote 494:

Charles, _Book of Enoch_, xc. 30.

Footnote 495:

Charles, _Book of Enoch_, p. 24.

Footnote 496:

_Id._ _op. cit._ chap. i. 4.

Footnote 497:

_Id._ _op. cit._ chap. i. 8.

Footnote 498:

David had the Philistines for suzerain, as Solomon had Egypt, cf.

Stanley A. Cook, in _Encyc. Bibl._ _s.v._ David, and Maspero, _Hist.

anc. des Peuples de l’Orient_, 1904, pp. 391, 422. Their successors,

too, up to the Captivity seem to have always been tributaries to

Assyria, Chaldaea, or Egypt. After that event, they were of course

vassals to the Persian and Macedonian Empires.

Footnote 499:

Charles, _Book of Enoch_, chap. xxxviii. 1.

Footnote 500:

_Op. cit._ chap. xxxviii. 5. Cf. xlvi. 4, “And this Son of Man whom

thou hast seen will arouse the kings and the mighty ones from their

thrones, and will loosen the reins of the strong and grind to powder

the teeth of the sinners.”

Footnote 501:

_Op. cit._ chap. lvi. 5. This verse, which Dr Charles considers an

interpolation, was evidently written in 40 B.C., when a Parthian army

under Pacorus invaded Palestine and put a puppet of their own on the

throne of Jerusalem, and before 39 B.C., when Publius Ventidius Bassus

drove the Parthians back to their own country. Cf. Morrison, _Jews_,

etc., pp. 58-61, and authorities there quoted.

Footnote 502:

Charles, _Book of Enoch_, chap. lvi. 6-8.

Footnote 503:

Charles, _op. cit._ p. 108. He there puts the date of the Similitudes,

as this portion of the Book of Enoch is called, about a quarter of a

century before the Parthian invasion. In that case, the prediction in

the text would be about the only instance of fulfilled political

prophecy known. But the discrepancy is doubtless to be explained by

the theory of interpolation after the event.

Footnote 504:

As in the admittedly Essene portion of the _Book of Enoch_ (Charles,

_op. cit._ chap. cviii. 8): “Who loved God and loved neither gold nor

silver, nor any of the goods of the world.”

Footnote 505:

Compare with this the desire to rid themselves of this world’s goods

which seized upon the inhabitants of Western Europe in 1000 A.D., when

it was believed that the Second Advent was at hand, and donations to

the Church beginning “in view of the approaching end of the world”

were common.

Footnote 506:

Schürer, _Hist. of Jewish People_ (Eng. ed.), II. pp. 157, 158.

Footnote 507:

Josephus, _Antiq._ Bk XIII. cap. 2, 3, where the tributes and taxes

are set forth. Morrison, _op. cit._ p. 360, notes that the Jews showed

no hostility to the tribute payable to the Greek kings, and that it

was the Roman system of taxation which most embittered their feelings

against the Gentiles.

Footnote 508:

Morrison, _op. cit._ pp. 41, 42.

Footnote 509:

Renan, in _L’Église Chrétienne_, chap. XI, tells the story with as

much grace as truth. His account is largely taken from the

investigations of Hartwig Derenbourg, himself of Jewish blood. Cf.

Morrison, _op. cit._ pp. 198-206.

Footnote 510:

They are arranged in the text as near as possible in the order of

their probable dates. As to these and on the question of authorship,

see Charles, _Crit. Hist._ pp. 172-226. The Sibylline Oracles can now

be consulted in the scholarly edition of Rzach (_Sibyllina Oracula_,

1891), and in Dr Charles’ _Apocrypha of the O.T._ (see below). The

Greek text of the Psalms of Solomon with a French translation and

critical introduction has been published by Dr J. Viteau and M.

François Martin (_Les Psaumes de Salomon_, Paris, 1911). (The Odes of

Solomon recently recovered for us by Dr Rendel Harris are most

probably Christian hymns.) The Latin text of the 4th Book of Esdras is

given by Bensly and James in Cambridge _Texts and Studies_, vol. III.

No. 2, and an English translation of part of it appears in the

Apocrypha of the A. V. (see _Speaker’s Commentary_ for a good text and

commentary by Lupton). The _Wisdom Literature_, _i.e._ the _Wisdom of

Solomon_ and _Ecclesiasticus_, also appears in the Apocrypha of the

A.V., as do the Books of _Maccabees_. English versions of all the

other books with critical notes and introductions have been published

by Prof. Charles as follows: _Book of Enoch_, Oxford, 1893; _Book of

the Secrets of Enoch_, Oxford, 1896; _Apocalypse of Baruch_, 1896;

_Assumption of Moses_, 1897; _Book of Jubilees_, 1902; and _Testament

of the XII Patriarchs_, 1908. All the above appear in English dress in

Dr Charles’ _Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the O.T._, Oxford, 1913.

Footnote 511:

See note 2 p. 149, _supra_. The essentially Jewish tendency towards

hyperbole and exaggeration in language must, however, be allowed for.

As someone has said, “Jacob I have loved, and Esau I have hated,” in

the mouth of a Jew means little more than that on the whole the

speaker prefers Jacob to Esau. See also note 1 p. 163, _supra_.

Footnote 512:

Isaiah xiv. 2; lx. 10; lxi. 5. All these passages are now said to be

post-Exilic by Charles, _Crit. Hist._ p. 115.

Footnote 513:

Charles, _Apocalypse of Baruch_, chap. xxx. 4, 5; chap. xxxvi. 11; 4

Esdras vii. 87.

Footnote 514:

Charles, _Book of Enoch_, chap. xlviii. 9; lxii. 9-12.

Footnote 515:

_Op. cit._ chap. xc. 30.

Footnote 516:

See note 3 p. 166, _infra_.

Footnote 517:

Cf. Isaiah xl. 15.

Footnote 518:

4 Esdras vi. 55-59; xv. 20, 21.

Footnote 519:

Charles, _Apocalypse of Baruch_, chap. lxxii. 2-6.

Footnote 520:

Charles, _Book of Jubilees_, chap. xv. 31, 32.

Footnote 521:

_I.e._ the Roman Empire.

Footnote 522:

Charles, _Assumption of Moses_, chap. x. 3, 5, 7, 8, 10.

Footnote 523:

Evidently a reminiscence of the Zoroastrian demon who is opposed to

the Amshaspand Vohu Mano or “Good Thought.” See Chapter VI, _infra_.

Footnote 524:

4 Esdras vii. 91-93.

Footnote 525:

The earliest document quoted is the part of the _Book of Enoch_ which

Prof. Charles considers was written between 166-161 B.C.; the latest,

the _Fourth Book of Esdras_, which he puts at 90 A.D. Yet he shows

that the hatred of the Gentiles and the hope that they would be

eternally destroyed or made slaves to Israel were present many

centuries earlier and are to be found in the writings attributed to

Ezekiel, Haggai, Joel, and Zachariah, as well as in Isaiah. Cf. _Crit.

Hist._ p. 160.

Footnote 526:

Tacitus, _Historia_, Bk V. c. 5.

Footnote 527:

Thus Jellinek, _Ueber das Buch der Jubilaen und das Noah-Buch_,

Leipzig, 1855, _passim_, says that the Book of Jubilees is of Essene

origin, and Schmidt and Merx, _Archiv für wissenschaftliche

Erforschung des Alten Testaments_, I. II. (1868) pp. 111-152, make the

same claim for the _Assumption of Moses_ and so on. For the _Book of

Enoch_ itself see above.

Footnote 528:

For the quotations from Enoch in the _Testament of the XII Patriarchs_

see Charles, Introduction to that book, p. lix; for those in the _Book

of Jubilees_ see _B. of J._ pp. 13, 36, 37, 53, 62-64, 102, 134, 146,

150, 212, 213; in the _Apocalypse of Baruch_, see A. of B. p. 101 and

notes; in the _Assumption of Moses_, see _A. of M._ x. 4, 9.

Footnote 529:

Josephus, _ubi cit._ in note 4 p. 151, _supra_, says (§ 8) that they

honoured the name of Moses next after that of God Himself; and that

any who blasphemed him was punished capitally.

Footnote 530:

Cf. Abel’s _Orphica_, Fr. 160, 161, 162, 202, 203, 204. From the

Orphics the practice passed into the Mysteries and the writings of the

post-Christian Gnostics. See Hatch, _Hibbert Lectures_, 1888, pp. 69,

74-75.

Footnote 531:

Like the Gold Plate of Caecilia Secundina, Chapter IV, p. 133,

_supra_. So the Sibylline Oracles contain the acrostic ΙΧΘΥΣ which

covers the name and titles of Jesus, Renan, _L’Église Chrétienne_, p.

535 and note. The Greeks must have caught the taste for such devices,

for an acrostic is found in a treatise on astronomy by Eudoxos of

Cnidos copied in the second cent. B.C. Many other instances are given

by Brunet de Presle, _Les Papyrus Grecs du Musée du Louvre_, Paris,

1865, pp. 43, 44. He says with some reason that the practice was

borrowed by the Greeks from the Jews.

Footnote 532:

Kenyon, _Gk. Pap. in B. M._, Papyrus CXXI, pp. 83 _sqq._

Footnote 533:

Hausrath, _op. cit._ pp. 114-116, where many other instances are

given. The explanation of “Nero(n) Caesar” as the Number of the Beast

is in fact as old as Irenaeus, who remarks that the variant 616 given

in some texts is due to the omission of the final _n_ in Latin. It

does not seem to be seriously disputed by any modern theologian.

Isopsephism however was not the invention of the Essenes, but of the

Babylonians, among whom it was in use, to judge from Berossos, in the

time of Alexander. See Alexander Polyhistor in Cory, _Ancient

Fragments_, 2nd ed. p. 25.

Footnote 534:

Charles, _Book of Enoch_, chap. lxix. 13-15. Cf. _id._, _The Apoc.

etc. of the O.T._, II. p. 234, where he has made some verbal

alterations in the reading.

Footnote 535:

Hausrath, _op. et_ _loc. cit._

Footnote 536:

Charles, _A. of M._ chap. ix. 1, and the note beginning on p. 35, _op.

cit._ Hausrath, _op. cit._ _sup._ pp. 116, 117, thinks the name is

arrived at by the process called Atbash.

Footnote 537:

If the authenticity of the Fragment quoted above from Philo could be

established, it would seem probable that Josephus simply copied the

figure from this last, and that 4000 was the number of the Essenes

about 20 A.D.

Footnote 538:

Renan, _L’Église Chrétienne_, p. 209.

Footnote 539:

Hausrath, _op. cit._ pp. 116, 117, for examples. By the method called

Temura he gets _Romah hagedôlah_ for Armageddon in the Canonical

Apocalypse. So Justin Martyr, _Cohort._ c. XXIV. says that Moses is

unintelligible without mystic insight, and that the name of Christ

contains a hidden meaning (_2nd Apol._ c. VI.).

Footnote 540:

Thus Irenaeus, _Adv. Haer._ Bk I. c. XII. § 11, p. 146, Harvey, makes

Marcus the heresiarch show that Alpha and Omega, the name given to

Jesus in Revelation, means the Dove which descended upon Him at His

baptism, because it has the same numerical value (περιστερά) of 801.

CHAPTER VI

PRE-CHRISTIAN GNOSTICS: SIMON MAGUS

We see, then, that the Essenes, in spite of the quietism and love of

peace that they professed, became in the long run either the instigators

of political revolt or, at best, the tools of those who thought to make

use of the fanaticism excited by their teaching in order to throw off

the yoke of the Gentiles. But these fanatics were almost exclusively the

Jews of Judaea, whose adherence to their own institutions caused them to

leave Babylon, where they were fairly well off, to be cooped up in a

land which in no time can have yielded an easy subsistence to a large

number of souls[541]. That people so circumstanced, confronted with a

power vastly superior to their own, and resolutely bent on compelling

its subjects to enter into its own system of orderly government, should

have looked to rebellion and supernatural help as their sole means of

escape, was only to be expected. But there were besides a great number

of Jews dispersed among the heathen, who had succeeded in acquiring vast

wealth together with the power which wealth brings with it; and these

were by no means inclined to upset the settled order of things which the

rise of the Roman Empire had brought into the East. To the humble

fisherman, vinedresser or husbandman of Judaea, daily vexed and harassed

by the Roman tax-gatherer and Roman police measures, the Roman peace,

the freedom from foreign conquest, and the higher standard of comfort

that came in with the legions, must have appeared far less desirable

than they did to the rich trader of Alexandria, Caesarea, or Damascus,

whose aptness in taking advantage of the foibles of his rulers had

enabled him to imitate their luxury and in some cases to share their

power[542]. Yet, with the tenacity peculiar to their nation, even these

rich Jews outside Palestine, while adopting gladly enough the material

benefits of the Graeco-Roman civilization, clung firmly to the one

exclusively national possession which remained to them, the Law of Moses

with all its observances. They were, however, quite sharp enough to see

that the rules laid down for the conduct of a loosely-compacted mass of

nomad tribes suddenly flung among hostile neighbours were unfitted to a

more settled civilization; and the thinkers among them were put to much

pains to discover some means by which they could claim their share of

Hellenistic culture without ceasing to be Jews[543]. At first this

generally took the form of pseudonymous writings bearing the name of

some author respected by the Greeks, and designed to prove that all the

Hellenistic arts, sciences, and doctrines were derived from the Hebrew

patriarchs. Thus, verses were ascribed to Orpheus and the Sibyl, and

historical works to Hecataeus of Abdera and a certain Aristaeus, having

for their object the praise of the Jewish nation, which were certainly

not written by the authors whose names were appended to them. So

Artapanus’ book “On the Jews” claimed that the Egyptians were indebted

to the Hebrews for all they knew, including even the worship of their

gods, and that this went back to the days of Abraham, who availed

himself of his stay in Egypt to teach astrology to the Pharaoh of his

time[544].

History, however, was at all times much less to the taste of the Jews

than metaphysics, and the many teachers of philosophy scattered through

the Hellenistic world found in them eager scholars, who were willing to

listen respectfully to any doctrine, so long as it could be shown to be

not inconsistent with their national religion and traditions. The most

sincere attempt thus to combine Hellenic and Jewish teaching that has

come down to us is that of Philo of Alexandria, who wrote probably

shortly after the Birth of Christ. In his system[545], God is

undefinable and has no qualities that can be perceived by man. As He is

absolutely perfect, He cannot come into contact with matter, and all His

dealings with it must therefore be conducted through intermediate

beings. These intermediate beings are the powers or attributes of God,

inconsistently, as Zeller points out, figured by Philo “as at once

independent hypostases and immanent determinations of the Divine

existence[546].” All the Divine Powers are summed up in the Logos or

Word of God, who is not only their chief but their source, and the great

intermediary between God and the universe. He is neither unbegotten nor

begotten after the manner of finite things, but is the vicegerent and

ambassador of God, who constantly makes intercession for the world. As

for man, his soul is itself nothing but one of those powers of God which

in another state of existence are called angels or daemons, and it is

his material body which is the source of all evil, and the prison of the

soul. Man can only free himself from this by resisting the allurements

of the senses, which God puts it into his heart to do. By such

resistance, he can exceptionally and occasionally acquire such virtue

that, even in this life, he may attain to the Divine Vision, when he

will be “lifted above and out of himself,” and the Spirit of God will

henceforth dwell in him and “stir him like the strings of a musical

instrument.” In the ordinary way, however, his emancipation will only

take place when his soul returns to its original incorporeal condition,

a reward which is bestowed on those who have kept themselves free from

attachment to this sensuous body[547].

That people holding tenets so far removed from anything in the Law and

the Prophets should form themselves into small sects or societies[548]

and take other means for their propagation is only natural, and no doubt

many such sects of which we have lost all trace existed in secret among

the Hellenizing Jews at the beginning of the Christian era[549]. Such a

sect were probably the Sethiani described by Hippolytus, whose “entire

system,” according to the author of the _Philosophumena_, was derived

from “the ancient theologians Musaeus, Linus, and Orpheus, who

elucidates especially the ceremonies of initiation as well as the

Mysteries themselves[550].” So far as Hippolytus explains their system,

which he appears to have very imperfectly understood, it set forth three

principles, which he calls “Light, Darkness, and an intermediate one

which is Spirit”; but all the passages quoted from the “Paraphrase of

Seth,” which he declares to be the work of the sect in question, refer

for their authority to the Old Testament, which it is evident the

Sethiani received as a real revelation[551]. But the one of these

half-Jewish half-Gentile sects of which we have the most detailed

account is that which passed under the name of Simon Magus, whom the

Fathers of the Church were unanimous in describing as the parent and

origin of all later Gnosticism[552].

This Simon, the New Testament describes as a man who had formerly “used

sorcery, and bewitched the people of Samaria, giving out that himself

was some great one: to whom all gave heed, from the least to the

greatest, saying ‘This man is the great power of God[553]’.” The author

of the Acts then goes on to say that Simon “believed” and was baptized

by Philip, and that when Peter and John came from Jerusalem to Samaria,

“he offered them money saying: Give me also this power, that on

whomsoever I lay hands, he may receive the Holy Ghost.” It is from this

offer, which seems to betray a desire to set up a Church of his own,

that his name, curiously enough, has since been associated in

ecclesiastical law with the offence of buying and selling benefices or

cures of souls[554]. Of Simon’s future career, however, the Acts of the

Apostles tell us nothing save that he left Peter with the request for

the Apostle’s prayers on his behalf. It is evident, from the text quoted

above, that both Simon’s sorceries and his acclamation by the people as

“the great power of God” took place before his conversion to

Christianity, whether this was real or feigned. Hence, Simon must have

been at the time already the leader of a school or sect, and as the

events narrated are in the same book set out before the Conversion of St

Paul and his preaching to the Gentiles, this sect must have been a

pre-Christian one[555].

That this sect was also one of those which sought to reconcile Judaism

with Hellenism seems antecedently probable. Samaria had been stripped of

a great part of its former inhabitants by Alexander the Great and

Ptolemy Soter, who had colonized it by “Macedonian” settlers, probably

of Syrian blood[556]. These colonists had accepted without difficulty

the religious reforms of Antiochus Epiphanes, and had offered that king,

according to Josephus, to dedicate their temple on Mt Gerizim to Zeus

Hellenios[557]. Later, on the death of Antiochus, John Hyrcanus, the

ethnarch or high-priest of the Jews, on the same authority, “revolted

from the Macedonians,” invaded Samaria, besieged its chief city and,

when he gained possession of it, entirely demolished it[558]. Gabinius,

when proconsul of Syria, rebuilt this and other cities which had been

destroyed by the Jews, and Herod the Great about 25 B.C. restored and

beautified it while renaming it Sebaste in honour of Augustus[559].

These events had intensified the hatred already existing between the

Jews and the Samaritans, and this was not diminished by the possession

by the latter of the Mt Gerizim temple which was in some sort the rival

of that of Jerusalem[560]. To judge from its later developments, the

religion of the Samaritans at the beginning of the Christian era

retained little of Judaism besides a reverence for the Pentateuch or

Five Books of Moses[561], and its other elements were apparently Greek.

We should therefore expect to find in Simon’s teaching before his

meeting with the Apostles, a leaning towards a mixed religion in which

Greek elements played the chief part, although the sanction attached to

it might be Jewish.

Such an expectation is abundantly justified by the evidence of

post-Apostolic writers. The documents known as the _Clementine Homilies_

and _Recognitions_ are now generally admitted to be a kind of religious

novel or romance composed for edification, and no consensus of opinion

exists as to their date, which has been taken by many learned critics as

ranging from the Ist to the IVth century A.D.[562]. They set forth with

much detail how Simon, after his first meeting with St Peter in Samaria,

everywhere opposed the chief of the Apostles, and followed him about on

many of his journeys, disputing with him at great length, until finally

put to flight by the superior dialectic of Peter[563]. The Apocryphal

_Acts of Peter and Paul_, which seem to be either wholly or in part

earlier than 275 A.D., further narrate that Simon attempted to convert

to his heresy the Emperor Nero, by flying over the Campus Martius at

Rome in a car drawn by demons; but was vanquished by St Peter, who by a

solemn adjuration caused him to fall violently to the earth and thus to

perish miserably[564]. This story became later the universal tradition

of the Catholic Church. All the patristic writers agree that Simon Magus

was accompanied in his missionary journeys by a woman of immoral life

whom he called the Ennoia or Thought of God, and declared to be a

reincarnation of Helen of Troy[565], while one of the Clementine

documents makes her, together with Simon, to have been among the

followers of John the Baptist[566]. There is no external corroboration

of either story; and such accusations of immorality were too frequently

bandied about between the early Christians and their adversaries for any

particular weight to be laid upon them[567]. Nor need the latest German

theory, that Simon Magus is in the Clementine literature but a pseudonym

for St Paul as the supposed opponent of St Peter, be discussed

here[568].

The first writer who gives us any authoritative account of Simon’s

pre-Christian teaching is Hippolytus, who in his _Philosophumena_ quotes

freely from a book which he attributes to Simon and calls the _Great

Announcement_[569]. Whether this be really Simon’s work or no, its

quotation in the _Philosophumena_ at least proves that a sect bearing

his name existed in the sub-Apostolic age, and that they held the

doctrines set forth in Hippolytus’ quotations from this document, which

can hardly have been due to anyone else in the first instance than Simon

himself[570]. In the _Great Announcement_ the First Cause of all things

is declared to be fire, on the strength of the statement in Deuteronomy

that “God is a burning and consuming fire[571].” This Infinite or

Boundless Power, as he calls it, Simon held to be not simple but

two-fold, having two natures, a hidden and a manifold one, so

intermingled that “the hidden one is concealed in the manifest, and the

manifest comes into being from the hidden one,” by which, as we shall

see later, he meant male and female. The manifest, again, can be

perceived by the senses like things with an actual existence, while the

hidden nature can only be apprehended by the mind, or in other words

imagined. In all this he seems at first sight to be echoing, as

Hippolytus points out[572], the notions of Plato upon the Intelligible

(τὸ νοητόν) and the Sensible (τὸ αἰσθητόν), those of Aristotle on Power

or Potentiality (δύναμις) and Actual Existence (ἐνέργεια), and, as

Hippolytus does _not_ say, those of Philo upon the First Cause and the

Logos[573]. The Cosmos or ordered universe came into being, Simon goes

on to say, from the unbegotten or self-existent fire, by means of six

“Roots” called respectively Mind (Νοῦς) and Thought (Ἔννοια)[574], Voice

(Φωνή) and Name (Ὄνομα), Reason (Λογισμός) and Desire (Ἐνθύμησις).

Although it is not here formally stated, it is noteworthy that this is a

system of couples or pairs, the name of one of each of the above pairs

being masculine and the other feminine[575]. In these six, Simon

imagined that the Boundless Power existed potentially, but not actually,

that is to say, that each of them represented one particular aspect or

quality under which the Supreme Being might be considered, but had no

existence apart from Him, while it required the addition together of all

the six to make up His entire being. A similar conception seems to

underlie the Zoroastrian idea of the six Amshaspands, from which it is

likely enough that Simon copied this part of his system[576]. It is here

that we meet for the first time in Gnosticism with the idea of emanation

or the flowing-forth of the Divine nature, which differs entirely from

that of creation, whether _e nihilo_ or from pre-existing matter,

inasmuch as the emanation still remains connected with the parent source

and never forms an entity distinct from it[577].

We see, then, that in Simon’s system, the primal world was a hebdomad or

consisted of seven Powers, being the three pairs of Roots enumerated

above together with a seventh, their source, in whom they were all

summed up[578]. But after this, and apparently created by it, is a

second or intermediate world, as to which the _Great Announcement_ thus

expresses itself:

“Unto you therefore I say what I say, and write what I write. The

writing is this. There are two stocks of all the Aeons put together,

having neither beginning nor end, springing from one Root, the which

is Power-Silence, invisible, incomprehensible (ἀκατάληπτος)[579], Of

which two stocks, one appears above, which is a great Power, the

Mind of the universes, which pervades all things, and is male: the

other [appears] below, a great Thought, is female, and gives birth

to all things. Thus, these, corresponding to one another[580], form

a pair (συζυγία), and show forth the Middle Space (διάστημα), an

incomprehensible air having neither beginning nor end. In this is

the Father who sustains (βαστάζων) all things and nourishes all

those things which have a beginning and end[581]. This is he who

standeth, hath stood, and shall stand[582], being both a male and

female power after the likeness of the pre-existing Boundless

Power[583], which has neither beginning nor end, but exists in

Oneness (Μονότης). For the Thought which came forth from the power

in Oneness became two[584]. And each of them was one. For he, when

he contained her within himself, was alone, nor was he the first,

although he existed before, but having appeared from himself, a

second came into being. But he was not called Father before

[Thought] had named him Father. Just as, then, he drawing forth

himself from himself manifested to himself his own Thought, so the

same Thought when she appeared did not create him, but, beholding

him, concealed the Father, that is to say, Power, within herself,

and [thus] there exists a male-and-female (_i.e._ hermaphrodite)

Power-and-Thought. For Power does not in any way differ from

Thought, they being one. Without the things which are above is found

Power; without those which are below, Thought. Thus, there is that,

also, which appeared from them, the which being one is found to be

two, a male-and-female containing the female within itself. This one

is Mind in Thought; for they, being one when undivided (ἀχώριστος)

from one another, are [yet] found to be Two[585].”

This statement seems at first to be merely an explanation and recitation

of what has been previously said as to the emanation of the “Roots” from

the Boundless Power, and by no means justifies the words of the _Great

Announcement_ in which it is magniloquently proclaimed to be “the Book

of the Showing-forth of Voice and Name from the Thought of the Great

Boundless Power. Wherefore it will be sealed up and hidden and veiled

and will rest in the habitation wherein the root of the worlds is

established (Θεμελιόω)[586].” But when we examine the words just quoted

by the light of the other systems said to be derived from Simon’s, we

see that they really indicate the belief of the author in a succession

of worlds, wherein every later or lower one is a reflection, as in a

glass, of that which was above it[587]. These lower worlds, like the

primal one, should each contain three pairs of “Roots,” emanating from

one source like rays from a lamp or other source of light. It also seems

that this source is, alike in the primal world and its successors, in

itself potentially both male and female, that is to say, the female

nature, which alone has the power of conception or producing new beings,

was originally concealed within the other as a thought is concealed

within the mind, and only becomes comprehensible when utterance is given

to it. Hence each of these Powers or, as Simon here calls them for the

first time, aeons, like the Supreme Being, has a double aspect. Seen

from below, that is to say, as it appears to the aeon which succeeds it,

it is female, that is to say, a source of being. To that which is above

it, or earlier in emanation, it is male, that is to say, it is the cause

of conception, and also the sustainer and director at once of the

conceiver and of that which she conceives[588].

Why now did Simon, or whoever wrote under his name, use such obscure and

at first sight unintelligible terms for his speculations on the nature

of the Supreme Being and the origin of the world? Simply, it would seem,

that he might reconcile two things which like certain chemicals found

themselves in presence of each other without any affinity for

combination. These were the Mosaic Law which, since the Captivity, both

Jew and Samaritan held themselves bound to treat as divinely

inspired[589], and the Greek “theological” ideas which then pervaded the

whole civilized world and were at the time accepted by all educated men

who thought about such subjects in much the same way as are in these

days the conclusions of physical science[590]. This forced him and

others who attempted to found a religion acceptable to both Jew and

Greek, to use language which could be interpreted in their own sense by

either. His Supreme Being is One, as Israel declared that her God was

One, but, by a not immodest metaphor, he contains within himself the

power of becoming both male and female, as Adonis, or Attis, or

Dionysos, or, to take the mythological person he most resembles, the

Orphic Phanes, was both male and female[591]. Simon also goes out of his

way to affirm that his first syzygy or pair, Mind and Thought, are in

the second world called Heaven and Earth, and thus forms a pretty close

parallel to the Orphic couple Uranos and Ge[592]. But he is careful to

mix with this explanations which shall also accord with the account of

creation given in the Book of Genesis. He who standeth, hath stood, and

will stand, _i.e._ the Eternal Being who is not liable to fall or

corruption, and is the “Father” of the “Middle Space” is no less the “I

am that I am” of Exodus than the Father of gods and men of Homer. So,

too, his companion from the beginning, called Silence, because she has

no independent existence until he gives utterance to his thought,

resembles the Nux or Night of Orpheus from whom Phanes begot Heaven and

Earth; but she is also, as Simon expressly says, the Spirit of God which

moved over the face of the waters in the Mosaic account of the

Creation[593]. If, again, Simon makes his first pair of “Roots” in the

second world Heaven and Earth, his second pair, Voice and Name, he

declares to be equivalent to the Sun and Moon, and his third, Reason and

Desire, to Air and Water[594]. This, he expressly says, is because the

Book of Genesis says that three clear days elapsed before the Sun and

Moon came into being, and these three “days” are an allusion to the

Boundless Power and the first pair Mind and Thought[595]. To a much

greater extent than Philo, therefore, Simon uses the religious

traditions of both Greeks and Hebrews to give sanction to his own

speculations.

The use of the word aeon, which our English Testament translates “age”

(_saeculum_) as the generic name of the six Roots or Powers reflected in

the second universe, seems also to have peculiar signification in this

connection. Among the Greeks, Hesiod sang of a golden age, succeeded by

others of silver, of brass, of one unnamed metal, and finally one of

iron; and the Orphics, working after their manner on older materials,

assigned the first of these ages to their god Phanes, and the others to

Night, Uranos, Kronos, and Zeus in succession, asserting that the last

age would be that of Dionysos[596]. The use of the word by Simon seems

to show that he conceived his emanations or “Roots” as succeeding one

another and perhaps depending from one another like the links of a

chain. But as he had already personified these emanations, we have the

curious result that he considered them both as persons—or, to be more

accurate, aspects of the Deity—and spaces of time. Nor was this all. The

great spread given to the Chaldaean star-worship throughout the East by

the events described in Chapter III above, had caused the stars to be

accepted by every nation in the Hellenist world as the most convenient

types of divinity[597]. The planets, including in that phrase the Sun

and Moon, were all known by the names of the most important gods in the

various pantheons of all the nations of antiquity, and were thought in

some not very clearly defined way to be identified with the divinities

whose names they bore[598]. Even before the time of Alexander, the

Platonic cosmogony had made of the stars and planets habitations where

the souls of men were supposed to rest on their way to mortal

bodies[599]; and Philo, while admitting that the stars were the rulers

of earthly things, could do no more than remind his readers that they

were not independent rulers, but only viceroys of Yahweh[600]. Hence

Simon, when he called three of his aeons by the names of Earth, Sun, and

Moon, made them places or worlds as well as persons and periods of time.

It was an extraordinary complication of ideas from which none of the

Gnostics who followed him succeeded in entirely freeing themselves[601].

To return, however, to Simon’s system of emanations. Have we any right

to consider that the Heaven and Earth, Sun and Moon, and Water and Air,

with which he peopled his second universe, were those which are

perceptible by our senses, or did he regard them as existing above our

ken and as merely the patterns which were in their turn reflected into

our universe? Hippolytus unfortunately breaks off his quotations from

the _Great Announcement_ at this point, and his own report of Simon’s

doctrines is neither lucid nor implicitly to be trusted. Irenaeus,

however, writing half a century before Hippolytus, declares that it was

the female aeon Thought, whom we have seen is equivalent in the second

or intermediate world to Ge or Earth, “who, comprehending the wish of

the Father, descended to the lower regions, and there produced angels

and the lower authorities (αί κάτω ἐξουσίαι) who made the universe

(κόσμος)[602].” If we believe, as seems most probable, that Simon

carried his theory of the lower world being a reflection of the upper

throughout all existing things, it follows that the second world,

containing as we have seen Heaven and Earth, Sun and Moon, and Air and

Water together with “the Father” in whom the six were contained, was the

pattern or paradigmatic world which was reflected in the lower universe

to which we belong. In this case it is probable that the six “Roots”

again changed their generic name, and after having been called powers

(δυνάμεις) in the primal world, and aeons in the second, were now

designated angels and authorities. If this conjecture is right, we have

here a parallel to the chain of being fabled by the Orphics which,

beginning with the gods, descended through demi-gods, heroes, and demons

down to men. An accurate knowledge of the different ranks of this

supramundane hierarchy was, as has been said, of great importance for

magical purposes such as exorcism, and its description occupied a great

part of the Enochian literature[603].

Simon, however, had still to account for the creation of man and the

part which he played in the scheme of the universe. His reverence for

Moses prevented him from directly contradicting the statement in Genesis

that Yahweh “formed man out of the dust of the ground,” and this he

echoes in the words of the Septuagint, which speaks of God moulding

(ἔπλασε) man by “taking dust (χοῦς) from the Earth (Γῆ).” The part here

played by the Yahweh of Genesis he transfers to “the Father” of his

second or intermediate world[604]; and as Genesis says that God made man

in his own image, he is also compelled to say that man was originally

made in the likeness of the Father. But “the Father” of Simon’s

intermediate world was, as we have seen, an hermaphrodite, or rather a

male containing a female power within himself[605]. Hence man was

originally both male and female, or in the words of the _Great

Announcement_ “not simple, but double according to image and

resemblance[606].” But this was clearly not the man of this world as we

know him, but the Heavenly or Archetypal Man who remained in the world

above ours, and was, as Philo held, a man-woman[607]. How did Simon

account for the separation of the sexes, and its influence upon

subsequent humanity?

The answer to this question involves Simon’s ideas as to the cause of

evil in this world and the means by which man can escape from it. Man

was, as we have seen, formed out of dust, but to make him, in the words

of Genesis, “a living soul,” it was necessary that he should be animated

by the breath (πνεῦμα) of the Divinity. So efficiently was this done

that everyone, as Simon said, has within him potentially but not in act,

“that which is blessed and incorruptible,” that is to say, “He who

standeth, hath stood and will stand,” or in other words the “Father” of

the intermediate world. “He it is,” he goes on to say, “who stood above

in the Unbegotten Power, who stands below, coming into being by

reflection (ἐν εἰκόνι) in the rush of the waters, and will stand above

by the side of the blessed and Unbegotten Power if he should receive

reflection or image (ἐὰν ἐξεικονισθῇ)[608].” For “there are three who

stand, and unless there are three aeons that stand, the unbegotten one,

who according to them [Qy. the Hebrews?] was borne over the face of the

water, is not in her proper place in the universe (οὐ κοσμεῖται)[609].

The which unbegotten one is fashioned by resemblance as perfect and

heavenly, but becomes, in regard to Thought alone, inferior to the

Unbegotten Power.” This Unbegotten Power, he goes on to say in words

that remind one of several different myths[610], is the “One power

cloven in twain above and below, who gives birth to itself, increases

itself, seeks itself, finds itself, being its own mother, its own

father, its own sister, its own spouse (σύζυγος), its own daughter, its

own son, a mother-father [and is] _one_, being the root of all the

universes[611].” It was the Thought of this Power who was charged with

bringing the Divine Spark to this world; but apparently, while she was

brooding over the face of the waters, she was seized by the angels and

authorities whom she had produced, “through motives of jealousy, because

they were unwilling to be looked upon as the progeny of any other

being[612].” These words are put into the mouth of Simon by Irenaeus,

who goes on to say that Thought was thus prevented from returning to the

Father and was shut up in a human body. At this point, the account of

Irenaeus agrees with that of the _Philosophumena_ which narrates that

(according to Simon) the world-making angels caused Thought (Ennoia) to

enter one body after another, including that of Helen of Troy (_causa

teterrima belli_), until she finally entered into the body of Simon’s

companion Helena whom he found in a brothel at Tyre[613]. Hippolytus

says, however, that Simon made up this part of the story out of shame as

regards his disciples[614] in order to explain his companying with

Helena, and it may be noticed that he nowhere quotes the _Great

Announcement_ in its support[615]. Epiphanius, who seems to have used

the same documents as Irenaeus, gives a different reason for the conduct

of the world-making angels from that of Irenaeus, and makes out that

they were seduced by the beauty of “Epinoia,” as he calls Ennoia or

Thought, the female aeon who had come down, and detained her below out

of sensual desire[616]. Both Irenaeus and Epiphanius are agreed that

Simon in some way “redeemed” Helena, although they do not say in what

way, and Hippolytus declares that Simon having purified Helena, in like

manner brought salvation to men by his own discernment[617]. Why Simon

should thus have power of salvation he does not explain directly, but

he, Irenaeus, and Epiphanius alike tell us, by what seems to be a wilful

or unconscious misinterpretation of the account in the New

Testament[618], that Simon gave himself out as the Supreme God, who,

seeing that the angels mismanaged this world from their desire for rule,

came here to put it right and descended through the different worlds,

changing his shape in each to accord with that of the rulers therein,

until he appeared here as man, “although he was not a man[619].”

Hippolytus further says, as does Irenaeus, that Simon was alleged “to

suffer in Judaea in the likeness of Jesus, although in appearance only,

and to have appeared to the Jews as Son, to the Samaritans as Father,

and to the other nations as the Holy Spirit[620].” His death he accounts

for by the story, found nowhere else in post-Christian literature, that

at some place, the name of which has slipped out of the text of the

_Philosophumena_, Simon

“taught sitting under a plane-tree. Moreover, exposure being at hand

through long delay, he said that if he were buried alive he would

rise again the third day. And a grave having been dug by his orders

by his disciples, he directed that he should be buried. His

disciples did what he commanded, but he remained there to this day.

For he was not Christ[621].”

In all this account, Hippolytus gives an entirely different account from

that of the Clementines, with the manifest purpose of holding Simon up

to obloquy as one of the “false Christs” predicted in the New Testament.

It is obvious also that, so far from giving us Simon’s pre-Christian

teaching, he is here handing down a garbled account of some tradition of

the heresiarch’s disciples after his death.

That the stories told by the Fathers, except when they are quoting

immediately from the _Great Announcement_, are not a trustworthy account

of Simon’s doctrines is evident from their manifest inconsistency. If

Simon’s disciples believed, as Hippolytus says, in the lawfulness of

promiscuous intercourse, why should he feel called upon to justify to

them by an artifice his connection with Helena? If, too, Simon, or the

Supreme Being in his likeness, came down from the highest heaven to

earth for the sake of redeeming his spouse Epinoia there held captive,

why did he not return with her when recovered, and for what purpose did

he simulate death in Judaea? Nor is there any plausible reason assigned

for the angels’ detention of Epinoia on earth by Hippolytus, which he

attributes, like Irenaeus before him, to jealousy and the desire for

rule, any more than by Epiphanius, who will have it to be caused by

their concupiscence—a story probably derived from the account of the

Watchers in the _Book of Enoch_. Hippolytus makes Epinoia come to earth

to establish, instead of taking away, the rule of the angels, who were

by his account her own progeny; and if the angels were, as Epiphanius

says, inflamed with love for her, the last thing they would be likely to

do would be to transform her out of her first and heavenly shape, and

finally place her in a brothel—as they are said to have done with

Helena, Simon’s mistress.

The key to Simon’s theory on the connexion between the salvation of

mankind and its division into sexes is probably to be found in a

paragraph in the _Philosophumena_ in which Hippolytus seems to quote

directly from the _Great Announcement_:

“And because,” he says, “the beginning of the generation of things

which are begotten[622] is from fire, he [Simon] devises (κατανόει)

a certain similar figure. Generation of all such things exists,

[and] the beginning of the desire of generation comes from fire. So,

for example, to desire changeable generation is called being

inflamed with love. But the fire, which is one, undergoes two

changes. In the man,” he says, “the blood which is hot and yellow as

typifying fire is changed into seed; but in the woman, the self-same

blood is changed into milk[623]. And the [result of the?] change of

the masculine blood is begetting; but the [result of the?] change of

the feminine, the nourishment of that which is begotten[624]. This,”

he says, “is the flaming sword turning both ways to guard the way to

the Tree of Life. For the blood turns into seed and milk, and that

power becomes [at once] mother and father of the things which are

born, and the increase of those which are nursed, having no need of

any external help and being sufficient unto itself. The Tree of

Life,” he says, “is guarded by the flaming sword turning both ways,

as we have said, [and] the seventh power which contains all things,

and which is stored up in the six powers, [comes forth?] from the

sword. For, if the flaming sword did not turn both ways, that

beautiful tree would be corrupted and destroyed. But if the Word

which is stored up potentially in them (the six powers), being the

lord of the proper place, is turned into seed and milk, within it is

born the Word of souls, beginning from the smallest spark, which

will be magnified and will increase and will become a boundless

power, unchangeable in the unchanging aeon, and it is born no more

until [it reaches?] the boundless aeon[625].”

The meaning of this very complicated and confused imagery—which we may

be sure Hippolytus has purposely made as obscure and ridiculous as

possible—seems to be this. In the two superior or heavenly worlds which

we have called the primal and the second, the “roots” are male and

female after the model of the Supreme Being. But this only means that

the female is the external manifestation of the male, _within_ whom she

has at one time been contained. No thought of sex, as we understand it,

enters into their relations, and no progeny follows from their

conjugation, the lower world coming into life after the pattern of the

upper by an impulse which, although due in the first instance to the

male, is translated into action by the female member of the first

syzygy. But with our universe and the appearance of man, a change in the

system takes place. Although our world, constituted after the heavenly

model, contains the three pairs, Heaven and Earth, Sun and Moon, Air and

Water, and is animated by the breath of life brought from above by

Epinoia or Ennoia, man is formed from previously-existing matter and is

therefore largely made up of an element hostile or repugnant to God.

Lest the Divine spark within him should free itself from matter and

return to the world above, each human soul has been divided, as Plato

tells us in the _Symposium_[626], and the two parts placed in different

bodies so that the male is imperfect without the female and the female

without the male, and the soul can make no effort to raise itself in the

world of being until it meets and is conjoined with its affinity. This

is probably in Simon’s view the device of the angels, who have brought

it about, according to Hippolytus, in order that Epinoia, the mother of

life, may remain longer in the world and therefore prolong their

rule[627]. But they are defeated by the Divine arrangement, which

compels the two parts of the soul, after having once entered upon the

round of mutable generation (ἡ μεταβλητὴ γένεσις), to change into one

body after another according to the Orphic theory of transmigration

until each meets with its twin. Thus did the soul of Helen of Troy pass

from one body into another until in the shape of Helena of Tyre it met

with its own affinity in the body of Simon. Then it became again

bisexual after the image of the boundless power to which it would again

rise. Thus must it be with all mankind until all the souls are thus

disentangled from matter[628]. According to Hippolytus, this event is to

coincide with the deliverance (λύσις) of the world, which seems to mean

that it is to be freed from the rule of the angels. Irenaeus and

Epiphanius twist this into the assertion that it is to be dissolved,

while one of the later Gnostic documents says that it is to be “caught

up,” that is to say, reabsorbed by the world of which it is the image.

But Hippolytus expressly includes this last doctrine among those

invented by “those who imitated the error” of Simon Magus, or in other

words by his successors[629], and it need not therefore be here

discussed.

Whence Simon derived the doctrine of which we get glimpses in the _Great

Announcement_ will probably remain in doubt until we recover more

fragments of that document. It appears likely, however, that he drew

from a number of sources. Even in his day and after the wholesale

depopulation of Samaria by the Syrians, Egyptians, and Jews, there must

have remained many of the inhabitants who were lineal descendants of

that mixed Semitic and Persian stock who “feared the Lord and served

brazen images.” Hence his speculations may well have been influenced by

the Persian religion of Zoroastrianism and Mazdeism, and some have

thought that they can see in them traces of the primitive fire worship

of the Magi[630]. Yet he need not have gone so far, for, as we have

seen, his idea of fire as the origin of all things might well be taken

from a too literal interpretation of a passage in the Samaritan

Pentateuch. So with regard to the six “roots,” although they may have

been mere copies of the Persian Amshaspands, they may also have come

from a Pythagorean or Orphic source, since Athamas the Pythagorean is

said to have taught that “there are four roots—fire, water, air, earth;

for from these is the genesis of what is produced,” and a verse of

Empedocles is preserved which makes the same assertion[631]. The

likeness of Simon’s system to Egyptian and Alexandrian teaching is even

closer. In ancient Egypt there was, as M. Maspero thinks, a well-defined

system of correspondences including three worlds, each of which was a

likeness or reflection of the preceding. At Hermopolis, too, there was

worshipped an ogdoad or family of four pairs of gods and goddesses who

on the same authority were merely attributes of one higher deity[632].

So in the tract _de Iside et Osiride_[633], we are told that genesis or

coming into being is the image or reflection in matter of that which

really exists, and that Horus, who seems here to represent the

perceptible world, is the εἰκών or image of the νοητὸς κόσμος or ideal

world, and is the child of this last world and matter. After all, there

is little more in this than an extension of Plato’s theory of ideas

which are the paradigms or patterns of perceptible things: but as Simon,

according to the Clementines[634], had studied in Alexandria he may well

have acquired such a notion either from Plato’s writings direct, or, as

is more likely, from the Alexandrian religion of Serapis and Isis as set

forth in the tract in question.

Of the history of the Simonian sect, we know very little more than has

been said. The Fathers accuse the Simonians of leading immoral lives, of

teaching the advisability of promiscuous intercourse, and of being

addicted to magic[635]. Irenaeus declares that they worshipped an image

of Simon in the likeness of Jupiter, and another of Helena in the shape

of Athena[636], to which Hippolytus adds that they were exceedingly

angry if any one ventured to call these statues either Simon or Helena

and instantly cast him forth of the sect as being ignorant of their

mysteries[637]. Eusebius—a very late witness—adds to this that they

worshipped these images with “prostrations and incense and sacrifices

and libations[638],” which taken with the other statements seems to show

that the Simonians, or perhaps only the pre-Christian followers of

Simon, really took part in the worship of the Greek gods Zeus and

Athena, possibly by way of complaisance with the Greek and Roman rulers

of Samaria, and that the likening of their statues to Simon and Helena

was only the patristic gloss on the fact. Epiphanius goes further and

attributes to them “mysteries of iniquity” and secret and obscene rites,

including the filthy parody of the Eucharist depicted by the late J. K.

Huysmans in his novel of _Là-Bas_[639]. But this also was an accusation

common to the adherents and opponents of Christianity at the time he

wrote. He also says that their sacrifices were offered to “the Father of

the Universes” (τῶν ὅλων) through the rulers and authorities[640], and

that they thought that the God of the Jews was one of the angels in this

lower universe who created man and divided the nations among them by

lot[641], an idea of which there is a trace in the Book of Daniel[642].

But it is plain that Epiphanius, in his desire to prove that Simon is

the parent of all subsequent heresy, is here mixing together the

opinions of different Gnostic sects with a result inconsistent even in

his own eyes. That the later Simonians had secret rites after the manner

of those described by Lucian in the case of Alexander of

Abonoteichos[643] is likely enough, but rests on no real proof[644].

Of the extent and persistence of the religion set on foot by Simon we

have some few indications, although these, too, hardly agree with one

another. Irenaeus declares that he was succeeded in the leadership of

the sect by Menander[645], another Samaritan, and this is confirmed by

Epiphanius, Philaster, and all the lesser writers on heresy down to and

including Eusebius[646]. Although there seems nothing new in the

doctrine which they assign to Menander, it is very probable that, after

Simon’s death, the tenets of the sect underwent a good deal of

modification. According to Theodoret, the Simonians spread chiefly in

Syria, Phrygia, and Rome[647]. Justin Martyr, writing in the reign of

Antoninus Pius, speaks of their school as still existing apparently in

Rome[648]. Origen, in the following reign, says indeed in his tract

against Celsus that there were no Simonians to be found anywhere

throughout the world[649]; but he was probably mistaken in this, as

Eusebius in the reign of Constantine speaks of them as still numerous,

although forced to hide themselves[650]. After this, and so soon as the

Church, now triumphant, began in her turn to persecute, they no doubt

either became converted to Christianity or joined other sects.

In these matters, as in many others concerning the Gnostics, the Fathers

of the Church were badly informed. The Gnostic indifference to outward

forms of religion made it very easy for any body of Gnostics to conceal

themselves in time of persecution[651], and thus to resist in the most

practical way any attempt to estimate their true strength, or the

relations of the different sects to one another. Gnosticism was, as the

Church was to find out later, a hydra, the heads of which when cut off

renewed themselves with amazing rapidity. Moreover, the very essence of

Gnosticism was secrecy for all but the initiated, and if we may judge

from the words of the _Great Announcement_ quoted above, the Simonians

took abundant care when they committed any of their doctrines to writing

that the result should be unintelligible without a good deal of previous

instruction. But if the fragments quoted are, as seems fairly certain,

the work either of Simon Magus himself or of some prominent and early

member of his school, the Fathers were abundantly justified in regarding

him as the source of all subsequent Gnosticism. The syncretic religion

which they unfold seems to have been admirably adapted to catch those

“barbarian” enquirers, of whom there were evidently many in the first

years of our era, who were trying by might and main to reconcile the

traditions of Judaism with the Greek learning and culture for the first

time brought within their reach. The system of terribly forced

interpretation of the Jewish scriptures employed by the Simonians was

probably their own invention, and would certainly never have passed

muster in a community possessed of a modicum of literary sense[652]; yet

it enabled them, as has been said, to turn their backs upon the plain

meaning of the books of the Old Testament. By their doctrine of

emanation, whether derived from Persian sources or not, they contrived,

perhaps for the first time, to bridge the huge gulf fixed by the

philosophy and physics of the time between their Supreme Being and the

gross matter which was thought to exist independently of and in

opposition to him; while their scheme of redemption, like that of the

Orphics from whom they apparently borrowed, went far, as they boasted,

to rob death of its terrors.

These features we find reproduced in the teachings of nearly every later

sect and school into which we shall have to enquire, and although our

information as to their doctrines is not exact enough to enable us to

determine the extent of the obligations of all of them to the teaching

of Simon, the chances are that in every case there was a more or less

conscious borrowing. Nor did the influence of the Samaritan _magus_

cease with the suppression of the many heresies which the Fathers

declared to be inspired by him. His speculations as to the succession of

heavens and of orders of heavenly beings passed into the teaching of the

Church[653] and obtained too firm a footing there to be dislodged until

the German Reformation. The memory of them extended even beyond its

pale, and while, in the VIIth century of our era, they came to inspire

such cosmology as is taught in the Koran, the system of Sephiroth or

successive emanations of the Deity, which underlies the farrago of

mystical nonsense called in the Middle Ages the Cabala of the Jews, is

directly derived from them. It may even be said that the influence of

Simon’s doctrines is not even now extinct in Europe, for in the writings

of Swedenborg, which still find exponents, many of his ideas seem to be

revived.

That Simon’s system as described in the _Great Announcement_ was the

result either of deep philosophic speculation or of original thought can

hardly be said. Its one novel feature was the rather clumsy fusion of

the Orphic cosmogony with the Mosaic account of creation, which reads

like a parody on Philo’s well-thought-out doctrine. Philo was born,

apparently, about 25 B.C., and was therefore in all probability a few

years older than Simon, so that such a parody is not altogether

impossible. One of the main differences between the two systems is that

to the asceticism of Philo and the Essenes Simon opposed, not perhaps a

recommendation to licence, but a theory making the union of the sexes

part of the scheme for the redemption of mankind. By so doing, he

probably made a much stronger appeal to Samaritans and Jews alike than

did the strict celibacy demanded by Orphics, Essenes, and the other

pre-Christian Gnostics. It is probable also that he included in his

propaganda some sort of thaumaturgy or wonder-working of the kind

employed, according to Lucian, by Alexander of Abonoteichos and,

according to Irenaeus, by the Jewish impostor Marcus. Although the

stories about this in the Clementines are manifestly fiction, we cannot

absolutely reject the universal testimony of the Fathers that Simon and

his followers made use of incantations and magical arts, and these are

probably the “sorceries” with which the writer of the Acts declares he

bewitched the Samaritans. Charlatanism, or more or less conscious

imposture of this kind, was rife, as will be presently shown, among the

lower classes of Palestine in his day, and would agree well with the

bombastic language of the extracts from the _Great Announcement_ which

Hippolytus has preserved for us.

Footnote 541:

The fanaticism of the Palestinian Jews in time affected their

co-religionists elsewhere, as when the Jews in Asia Minor rebelled and

committed atrocities in the reign of Trajan. See Morrison, _Jews under

Roman Rule_, p. 191, and Renan, _Les Évangiles_, Paris, 1877, p. 503.

Probably such outbreaks were condemned by those of the nation who had

anything to lose, as was certainly the case during the Revolt under

Hadrian.

Footnote 542:

Morrison, _op. cit._ p. 375; Mahaffy, _Greek Life and Thought_, 1887,

pp. 468-482; _Greek World under Roman Sway_, 1890, p. 47.

Footnote 543:

Schürer, _History of the Jewish People_, Eng. ed. II. pp. 157, 158.

One of the best proofs of this tendency is the fashion among all

classes of Jews at this period of giving their children Greek names.

See Mahaffy, _Greek Life and Thought_, p. 480. Even among the Apostles

we have Andrew and Philip.

Footnote 544:

Schürer, _op. cit._ II. pp. 206, 306, 309; Morrison, _op. cit._ p.

395.

Footnote 545:

Schürer, _op. cit._ II. pp. 369-380, following, as he tells us,

Zeller, gives an excellent and coherent account of Philo’s system,

which see. As Schürer points out (_op. cit._ II. p. 368), Philo

“hellenized” so thoroughly that practically the only Judaic elements

in his system are the assertion of monotheism, a contempt for

image-worship, and the claim that the Jews possessed through the

Mosaic revelation the highest religious knowledge.

Footnote 546:

Schürer, _op. cit._ II. p. 372. For a definition of hypostasis in this

connection and its original equivalence to οὐσία and _substantia_ (as

in the _Quicunque vult_), see Hatch, _Hibbert Lectures_, 1888, p. 275.

Footnote 547:

Were those who did not attain to this height in Philo’s opinion

annihilated or re-incarnated? His view that for the wicked this life

is the real hell (_De congr. erud. grat._ § XI.) would suit either

theory; but in _de Cherub._ § I. it is plain that he contemplates the

eternal punishment of the damned.

Footnote 548:

Secret, not from the jealous motive of the Gnostics, but because if

their opinions had become generally known they would have been cast

out of the synagogue.

Footnote 549:

So Renan, _Les Évangiles_, p. 452. It is quite possible that the sect

of the Essenes may have included many divisions.

Footnote 550:

Hippolytus, _Philosophumena_, Bk V. c. 3, p. 218, Cruice.

Footnote 551:

M. de Faye is probably right in saying (_Étude Critique des Documents

du Gnosticisme Chrétien_, Paris, 1913, pp. 352, 353) that the Sethiani

were never a very important sect. Stähelin’s theory (_Die Gnostischen

Quellen Hippolyts_, Leipzig, 1890) that Hippolytus was deceived by a

forger who drew all his “heresies” from one document (see Chapter VII,

_infra_) is too fantastic to be correct, but it has done good service

in calling attention to the family likeness between most of the

systems which he sketches. Cf. E. de Faye, _Intro. à l’Ét. du Gnost._,

Paris, 1903, p. 68. We are not likely to reach any more definite

conclusion unless some lucky discovery reveals to us the sources of

Hippolytus’ compilation.

Footnote 552:

Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 16, p. 191, Harvey; Hippolytus, _Philosophumena_,

Bk VI. c. 20, p. 267, Cruice; Augustine, _de Haeres. lib._ cc. I.,

II., III.; Praedestinatus, _de Haer._ Bk I. c. 1; Pseudo-Tertullian,

_adv. omn. Haer._ c. I. etc.

Footnote 553:

Acts viii. 9, 10.

Footnote 554:

From the story in Acts, it appears that what Simon tried to buy was

the power of ordination. The offence in modern ecclesiastical

jurisprudence seems to be the obtaining the priestly office by

purchase rather than by merit or gift.

Footnote 555:

Cf. Amélineau, _Gnosticisme Égyptien_, p. 51.

Footnote 556:

Morrison, _op. cit._ p. 351. Cowley in Cheyne’s _Encyclopaedia

Biblica_, _s.v._ Samaritans, omits this; but see Josephus, _Ant._ Bk

XII. c. 2, § 1.

Footnote 557:

Josephus, _op. cit._ Bk XII. c. 5, § 1.

Footnote 558:

_Ibid._ _op. cit._ Bk XIII. c. 10, § 3.

Footnote 559:

_Ibid._ _op. cit._ Bk XV. c. 9, § 5.

Footnote 560:

“Neither at Jerusalem, nor on this mountain [Gerizim] shall men

worship the Father,” John iv. 21.

Footnote 561:

Cowley in _Encyc. Bibl._ _s.v._ Samaritans, col. 4260. According to

Renan, _Les Évangiles_, p. 451, the Samaritans at the beginning of our

era were divided into a great number of sects, all more or less

attached to Simon. The authorities he quotes are, however, too late to

establish this satisfactorily.

Footnote 562:

The question was discussed and resolved, as far as it could be in the

then state of our information, by Salmon in Smith’s _Dictionary of

Christian Biography_, _s.v._ Clementines. Mgr. Duchesne, _Early

History of the Christian Church_, Eng. ed. 1909, p. 96, n. 2, sums up

in favour of their ultimate derivation from the _Preaching of Peter_

composed at the end of the IInd or beginning of IIIrd cent. He thinks

the Clementines orthodox save for a slight Arian tendency.

Footnote 563:

So Theodoret; but this was a common form in the patristic accounts of

such disputes. It is repeated in the dispute of Archelaus with Manes,

mentioned in Chapter XIII, _infra_, which see.

Footnote 564:

See Tischendorf’s edition, _passim_. The age of the book may be

guessed by its containing the _Quo Vadis_ story quoted by Origen.

Footnote 565:

Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 16, p. 191, Harvey; Hippolytus, Bk VI. c. 1, § 19,

p. 264, Cruice; Epiphanius, _Panar._ Bk I.; _Haer._ XXI. c. 2 (p. 125

of Oehler’s vol. II. pt. 1).

Footnote 566:

_Clementine Homilies_, II. c. 23.

Footnote 567:

Marcion and Marcus, both leaders of Gnostic sects, were both accused

by the Catholics of seduction, while the Pagans naturally put the

worst construction on the intimacy existing between confessors and

martyrs and their converts, as is evidenced by the story of Paul and

Thekla.

Footnote 568:

This seems to have been first set on foot by Baur and the Tübingen

school, and has lately been revived by Schmiedel in the _Encyc. Bibl._

_s.v._ Simon Magus. Even if we were to admit that it was well founded

with regard to the _Clementines_, it would not get rid of the

testimony of the Acts and of Justin Martyr that Simon Magus had an

actual historical existence.

Footnote 569:

Ἀπόφασις μεγάλη. “Declaration” would perhaps be a better translation

of the word; but that given in the text is the one used by most

writers on the subject.

Footnote 570:

Simon’s authorship of the book has been defended by Renan (_Les

Apôtres_, Paris, 1866, p. 267 and note) and attacked by many other

writers. Salmon, _op. cit._, Schmiedel, _op. cit._, and Stock in the

_Encyclopaedia Britannica_ (last edition), _s.v._ Simon Magus, aver

that there were two Simons, one the personage of the Acts, and the

other, a Gnostic leader of the IInd cent. to whom or to whose

followers the _Great Announcement_ is to be attributed. This theory,

although attractive, would prove too much; for Justin Martyr, himself

a Samaritan, has no doubt that Simon the heresiarch is the Simon of

the Acts, and if he is wrong in this, a matter which may well have

been within his own personal knowledge, Hippolytus is our best and

earliest authority for Simon’s doctrines.

Footnote 571:

Deut. iv. 24.

Footnote 572:

Hippolytus, _op. cit._ Bk VI. c. 1, § 9, p. 247, Cruice.

Footnote 573:

As when he says that the Logos is not God, but his reflection. See

Philo, _de Somn._ I. 41 (p. 656 of Mangey). “Just as those who cannot

gaze upon the sun may yet gaze upon a reflection of it.” Cf. Hatch,

_H. L._ p. 248.

Footnote 574:

Irenaeus and Epiphanius (where before quoted) both call this second

partner in the first pair of “Roots” Ἔννοια. Hippolytus, _op. cit._ Bk

VI. c. 1, § 13, p. 251, Cruice, has Ἐπίνοια. Does this mean

“after-thought” or “second thought” as showing her posteriority to

Nous? At any rate it is some indication that he is copying from a

different source than that of his predecessors. King (_Gnostics and

their Remains_, 2nd ed. p. 61) would translate Ἐνθύμησις by “thought,”

while he calls Ἔννοια “Intelligence.” The Abbé Cruice translates

Ἐνθύμησις “Conceptio.” It seems here to mean Desire not in a fleshly

but a mental sense.

Footnote 575:

The names of Ὄνομα and Φωνή are placed in the reverse order to the

others, inasmuch as in this pair the feminine comes first. This is

curious because in the same section they are compared to the Sun and

Moon, the sex of which is transposed in several mythologies.

Footnote 576:

The names of the Amshaspands of Zoroaster are, _Vohu Mano_, or Good

Mind, and _Asha Vahishta_, or Truth; _Khshathra Vairya_, or Right Law,

and _Spenta Armaiti_, or Wisdom; _Haurvetat_, or Good Health, and

_Ameretat_ or Immortality. The likeness between this and Simon’s

system has been noticed by, among others, Harvey the editor of

Irenaeus, in his Introduction to that author, pp. lxv _sqq._ For the

resemblance between post-exilic Judaism and Zoroastrianism, see

Cheyne, _Jewish Religious Life_, pp. 157, 210, 251, 257 _sqq._ But see

p. 197, _infra_.

Footnote 577:

Emanation is well defined by Mallet (_Culte de Neit à Saïs_, Paris,

1888, pp. 212, 213) as “a perpetual flowing-forth, which does not

imply any effort, and which consequently neither exhausts nor even

diminishes the productive principle.” Emanations, however, he goes on

to say, become weaker and less perfect the further they get from their

first source. The first mention I can find of the word is in Plutarch

(_de Is. et Os._ c. XLIX.) who says that the visible Cosmos is “the

flowing forth (ἀπορροή) and displayed image of Osiris.”

Footnote 578:

Curiously enough, the author of the _Clementine Homilies_ adopts this

notion for orthodoxy, when he makes St Peter (XVII. c. 9) declare that

God possesses six “extensions” having the nature of six infinites and

that He with them makes up the “mystery of the hebdomad.”

Footnote 579:

_I.e._ “which cannot be grasped,” “intangible,” as in the Athanasian

Creed.

Footnote 580:

ἀντιστοιχέω “set over against each other.” It seems to be a term used

in logic.

Footnote 581:

This is _not_ the Supreme Father, but the Logos or his representative

in the world succeeding his. It is with this being that Simon

according to the author of the Clementines (_Hom._ II. c. 24)

identified himself.

Footnote 582:

Ὁ ἑστώς, στάς, στησόμενος. This seems to be the expression which the

author of the Canonical Apocalypse is trying to reach in his fearful

solecism ἀπὸ ὁ ὦν καὶ ὁ ἦν καὶ ὀ ἐρχόμενος. See Revelation i. 4.

Footnote 583:

So the Supreme Being of Simon is androgyne.

Footnote 584:

The difficulty in deducing both male and female divinities from a male

or sexless Supreme being has led to some strange mythology. The

Egyptians cut the knot in an effective if coarse way. “Thus from one

god I became three gods,” says the Egyptian deity “the Lord of the

Universe,” in his account of the Creation. See Budge, “Papyrus of

Nesi-Amsu,” and _Egyptian Hieratic Papyri in the British Museum_, pp.

xiii, xiv and 14, 15. Was the author of the Apophasis acquainted with

this story? The Clementines make Simon’s associates Egyptians or

rather Alexandrians. See _Clem. Hom._ Bk IV. c. 6.

Footnote 585:

Hippolytus, _op. cit._ Bk VI. c. 1, § 18, pp. 261, 262, Cruice.

Footnote 586:

_Op. cit._ Bk VI. c. 1, § 9, p. 246, Cruice.

Footnote 587:

Amélineau, _Gnosticisme Égyptien_, p. 39, makes this perfectly clear.

Cf. Ad. Franck, “Le Gnosticisme Égyptien” in _Journal des Savans_,

Avril, 1888, pp. 212, 213. Hatch (_H.L._ p. 205) points out that it is

the doctrine of “Philo and the Platonists.”

Footnote 588:

As will be seen later, the post-Christian Gnostics of the IInd cent.

generally attributed the existence of evil to the escape of one of the

syzygies from the control of her spouse and her consequent fall into

matter. See Chapter VIII, _infra_.

Footnote 589:

The excessive reverence of the Samaritans for the Pentateuch is well

brought out by Cowley in the _Encyc. Bibl._ _s.v._ Samaritans. He says

it was the only part of the Jewish books which they took over and held

sacred (col. 4260). Simon in the _Great Announcement_ thought it

necessary to “explain” each of the Five Books separately. See

Hippolytus, _op. cit._ Bk VI. c. 1, §§ 15, 16, pp. 253-258, Cruice.

Footnote 590:

Throughout all the philosophical and religious literature of the time,

it seems to have been sufficient to quote “Orpheus and the other

theologists” to command a hearing. See Clement of Alexandria,

_passim_, for examples.

Footnote 591:

See Chapter IV, p. 123, _supra_.

Footnote 592:

See especially Fr. 239 in Abel’s _Orphica_.

Footnote 593:

Hippolytus, _op. cit._ Bk VI. c. 1, § 14, pp. 252, 253, Cruice.

Footnote 594:

_Ibid._ Bk VI. c. 1, § 13, pp. 251, 252, Cruice.

Footnote 595:

_Ibid._ _loc. cit._ Cf. Amélineau, _Gnost. Ég._ p. 39.

Footnote 596:

Abel’s _Orphica_, pp. 186, 254, 255.

Footnote 597:

“The visible and generated Gods.” So Alcmaeon of Crotona and

Xenocrates both call stars and planets gods. See Clem. Alex.

_Protrept._ c. VI.; Plato, _Timaeus_, c. XV. The prophets of the Jews,

indeed, blamed their co-religionists for “worshipping the sun towards

the east” as Ezekiel saw them doing in the Temple, or for “serving all

the host of heaven” as Jeremiah says the inhabitants of Jerusalem did;

but their reproaches make it plain that the bulk of the nation were in

this respect like their Gentile neighbours.

Footnote 598:

So Clem. Alex. _Strom._ Bk VI. c. 13, says the worship of the sun,

moon, and stars was instituted, so that the nations might not become

utterly godless.

Footnote 599:

See Bouché-Leclercq, _L’Astrologie grecque_, Paris, 1899, p. 21, for

references.

Footnote 600:

Philo, _de Monarch_. Bk I. c. 1.

Footnote 601:

Except perhaps Marcion. But we have so little literature remaining

which can with any certainty be attributed to the Marcionites that we

cannot speak with any certainty as to his phraseology. In his treatise

against the Valentinians (c. XX.) Tertullian gibes at that sect for

“thinking the different heavens intelligent, and for making angels of

them.”

Footnote 602:

Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 16, § 2, p. 192, Harvey. Theodoret, _Haer. Fab._ Bk

I. c. 5, echoes the statement, and Hippolytus, Bk VI. c. 1, § 19, p.

263, Cruice, gives what is probably the original Greek of Irenaeus.

Hatch, _H. L._ pp. 185, 186, points out that Philo held not only that

the angels were God’s instruments in making the worlds, but the

patterns after which they were made. Cf. Philo, _de Monarch._ Bk II.

c. 6.

Footnote 603:

These “orders” of supernatural beings passed into orthodox

Christianity. Cf. the εἴτε θρόνοι, εἴτε κυριότητες, εἴτε ἀρχαί, εἴτε

ἐξουσίαι of Coloss. i. 16, whence the “Thrones, Dominations, Virtues,

Princedoms, Powers” of Milton. The functions of all these different

orders are set out by Dionysius the Areopagite so-called, and present

a certain likeness to Simon’s ideas as given in the text. See Lupton

in _Dict. Christian Biog._ _s.v._ Dionysius.

Footnote 604:

That is Zeus, “Father of Gods and Men”; not the Juppiter Optimus

Maximus of later philosophy.

Footnote 605:

Possibly an allusion to the “rib” story of Genesis.

Footnote 606:

οὐχ ἁπλοῦν, ἀλλὰ διπλοῦν κατ’ εἰκόνα καὶ καθ’ ὁμοίωσιν. Hippolytus, Bk

VI. c. 1, § 14, p. 253, Cruice.

Footnote 607:

So Philo, _Legg. Allegor._ III. p. 1089, Mangey; _Quis rer. divin._ p.

503 _id._ Cf. Döllinger, _Jud. und Heid._ Eng. ed. II. p. 430.

Footnote 608:

Hippolytus, Bk VI. c. 1, § 17, p. 259, Cruice.

Footnote 609:

See last note.

Footnote 610:

So Iacchos is at once the father, son, and spouse of Persephone. Horus

is by his identification with Osiris in like manner the son, spouse

and brother of Isis. The seeking and finding seems to be an allusion

to this last pair. Cf. _P.S.B.A._ 1914, p. 93.

Footnote 611:

Hippolytus, Bk VI. c. 1, § 17, p. 259, Cruice. For the μήτηρ, πατήρ of

the text it is necessary to read μητροπάτωρ unless we are to believe

that the author is here repeating without rhyme or reason the

statement already made in the same sentence that the power he is

describing is its own mother and its own father. The expression

μητροπάτωρ is found in an address to Zeus attributed to Orpheus and

quoted by Clement of Alexandria, _Strom._ Bk V. c. 14. Cf. Frgs. 238,

239 of Abel’s _Orphica_. He remarks concerning it that, by this

μητροπάτωρ, Orpheus meant not only birth from the Μὴ ὤν, but also

“gave occasion to those who bring in the emanations and perhaps

imagine a spouse of God,”—which gives some colour to the surmise that

Clement may have been acquainted with Simon’s writings.

Footnote 612:

Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 16, § 2, p. 192, Harvey. A similar motive was

assigned by the Orphics for the murder of the infant Dionysos by the

Titans.

Footnote 613:

Hippolytus, Bk I. c. 16, § 19, pp. 263, 264, Cruice.

Footnote 614:

τοὺς μαθητὰς αἰδούμενος τοῦτον τὸν μῦθον ἔπλασεν, _loc. cit._

Footnote 615:

See _ibid._, p. 264, Cruice.

Footnote 616:

Epiphanius, _op. cit._ Bk I., _Haer._ XXI. c. 11 (p. 125 of vol. II.

pt I. of Oehler). Probably this idea is a mere echo of the story in

Genesis vi. 2, of the “sons of God” being captivated by the “daughters

of men,” which is much insisted on in the Enochian literature. Cf.

Cumont, _Recherches sur le Manichéisme_; _La Séduction des Archontes_

or Chapter XIII, _infra_ for later elaborations of the legend.

Footnote 617:

Τὴν δὲ Ἑλένην λυτρωσάμενος, οὕτως τοῖς ἀνθρώποις σωτηρίαν παρέσχε διὰ

τῆς ἰδίας ἐπιγνώσεως. See note 3 p. 190, _supra_. The ἐπίγνωσις of the

text seems to indicate that Simon discovered the way of salvation not

by any revelation from a higher power, but by his own intelligence and

examination. Cf. what he says (Hippolytus, _Phil._ Bk VI. c. 16, p.

256, Cruice) about the knowledge of Gentile writings being sufficient

for the ἐπίγνωσις τῶν ὅλων.

Footnote 618:

Acts viii. 9, 10, only says that Simon bewitched the people of

Samaria, giving himself out to be some great one (λέγων εἶναί τινα

ἑαυτὸν μέγαν); and that it was the people who said of him: “This man

is the so-called great power of God” (Οὗτός ἐστιν ἡ δύναμις τοῦ θεοῦ ἡ

καλουμένη μεγάλη). He was therefore only in the same position as Paul

and Barnabas in Phrygia when they were hailed by the populace as Zeus

and Hermes respectively. Cf. Acts xiv. 12.

Footnote 619:

Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 16, § 2, p. 193, Harvey; Epiphanius as in n. 1

_supra_. This episode of the Saviour changing his form so as not to be

recognized by the powers of the heavens through which he passes on his

way to earth, is a favourite one in the post-Christian Apocryphal

literature. Cf. R. H. Charles, _The Ascension of Isaiah_, p. 62. In

the _Pistis Sophia_ (for which see Chapter X, _infra_), Jesus in like

manner changes His appearance in each heaven on His descent to earth.

When He returns in His proper shape the spirits in every “place” into

which He enters fling themselves on their faces and cry: “How did the

Lord of the Universe change himself, so that we knew him not?”: see p.

21 Copt. _et al._ The “Docetic” theory which made the earthly body of

Jesus a phantasm or illusion appears again in the heresy of the

Valentinians and elsewhere. See Chapter IX, _infra_.

Footnote 620:

Hippolytus, _loc. cit._ p. 265, Cruice.

Footnote 621:

_Ibid._ § 20, p. 267, Cruice. The story here told is in direct

contradiction to the received tradition of the Church, that Simon met

his death when attempting to fly heavenward before the Emperor Nero.

That given in the text seems to be taken from the doings of some

Indian Yogi, and the idea of Simon teaching “sitting under a plane

tree” is distinctly Buddhistic. It is mentioned by no other writer

than Hippolytus; but Justin Martyr (_First Apolog._ c. 26) says that

he persuaded his followers that he would never die, and that some in

Justin’s day still believed this. A sort of echo of it appears in the

_Acts of Peter and Paul_, where it is said that the body of Simon

after being dashed to pieces was kept by the Emperor Nero for three

days “to see whether he would rise again.”

Footnote 622:

ἀπὸ πυρὸς ἡ ἀρχὴ τῆς γενέσεως ἐστι τῶν γεννωμένων.

Footnote 623:

Clement of Alexandria (_Paedagogus_, Bk I. c. 6) says practically the

same thing.

Footnote 624:

Καὶ γίνεται ἡ τοῦ ἄρρενος τροπή, γένεσις· ἡ δὲ τῆς θηλείας τροπή,

τροφὴ τοῦ γεννωμένῳ. Note the curious jingle between τροπή and τροφή,

γένεσις and γεννωμένῳ.

Footnote 625:

Hippolytus, Bk VI. c. 1, § 17, pp. 259, 260, Cruice. That this refers

to the conjunction of man with his twin-soul or affinity is certain

from Hippolytus’ former quotation from the _Apophasis_, that man was

made by God οὐχ ἁπλοῦν, ἀλλὰ διπλοῦν κατ’ εἰκόνα καὶ καθ’ ὁμοίωσιν

“not single, but two-fold according to copy and resemblance”: and that

he will “perish with the world” unless he be made into the likeness of

the Spirit who was borne upon the face of the waters, and who was,

like that of which it was the reflection, androgyne (Hippolytus, _op.

cit._ Bk VI. c. 1, p. 253, Cruice). “But if he be made into this

likeness,” Hippolytus continues, “and is born from an indivisible

point as it is written in the _Apophasis_, that which is small will

become great. And that which is great will exist in the boundless and

incorruptible aeon, which will not be born again.” Besides the idea of

the indivisible point, which we shall meet with again in the Bruce

Papyrus (for which see Chapter X, _infra_), it seems evident that

Simon was here teaching that those who find their twin-souls will rise

in the scale of being and thus escape the cycle of changing existences

dreaded by the Orphics (see Chapter IV, _supra_). An explanation of

the metaphor of the flaming sword is suggested later. See note 3 on p.

67 of vol. II, _infra_.

Footnote 626:

Plato, _Symposium_, cc. 17, 18. Diotima later on in the same Dialogue

says that it is an old story that those who are in love are seeking

their lost half. In one of the documents of the _Pistis Sophia_, it is

said that “the servants of the Sphere of Destiny” after making the

soul of man, divide it into two parts, and give one part to a man and

another to a woman who are then bound to come together (no matter how

far apart they may be) and to unite, when a new soul is the result

(_Pistis Sophia_, p. 346, Copt.).

Footnote 627:

So in the _Pistis Sophia_ (p. 37, Copt.), Jesus says that the angels

bound in the stars were, until His coming, in the habit of turning

about and devouring their own matter, from which the souls of men and

other animals were made, in order that their rule might endure the

longer.

Footnote 628:

Probably this is the meaning of the well-known saying of Jesus,

generally quoted as coming from the _Gospel according to the

Egyptians_, in answer to Salome’s enquiry as to the time of the coming

of His kingdom: Ὅταν τὸ τῆς αἰσχύνης ἔνδυμα πατήσητε, καὶ ὅταν γένται

τά δύο ἔν, καὶ τὸ ἔξω ὡς τὸ ἔσω; καὶ τό ἄρρεν μετὰ τῆς θηλείας, οὔτε

ἄρρεν οὔτε θῆλυ. “When ye tread under foot the garment of shame, and

when the two shall be one, and the outside as the inside, and the male

with the female, neither male nor female.” See Hilgenfeld, _N.T. extra

Canon. recept._, Lipsiae, 1884, vol. IV. p. 44. “The outside as the

inside” may refer to the body and the rib which was in the Genesis

story taken out of it. So the _Pistis Sophia_ (p. 378, Copt.) speaks

of “the Light of Lights, the places of Truth and Goodness, the place

of the Holy of Holies, the place of the Holy of all Holies, the place

in which there is neither male nor female, nor shape, but Light

everlasting, unspeakable.” Hippolytus, _op. cit._ Bk V. c. 7, p. 146,

Cruice, carrying this a step further, speaks of heaven as a place

“where there is neither male nor female, but a new creature, a new man

who is androgyne (ἀρρηνόθηλυς).”

Footnote 629:

Hippolytus, Bk VI. c. 1, § 19, p. 266, Cruice; Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 16,

§ 2, p. 194, Harvey; Epiphanius, _Haer._ XXI. c. 2, p. 124, Oehler.

Footnote 630:

Franck, _Le Gnost. Ég._ p. 212.

Footnote 631:

Clem. Alex. _Strom._ VI. c. 2.

Footnote 632:

Maspero, _Ét. Égyptol._ II. pp. 187 and 385.

Footnote 633:

_de Is. et Os._ cc. LIII. LIV. and LVI.

Footnote 634:

Clem. _Hom._ II. c. 22.

Footnote 635:

Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 16, § 3, p. 194, Harvey; Hippolytus, _op. cit._ Bk

VI. c. 1, § 20, p. 266, Cruice.

Footnote 636:

Irenaeus and Hippolytus where last quoted.

Footnote 637:

Hippolytus where last quoted.

Footnote 638:

Eusebius, _Hist. Eccl._ Bk II. c. 13.

Footnote 639:

Epiph. _Haer._ XXI. c. 4 (p. 125, vol. II. pt I., Oehler).

Footnote 640:

See last note.

Footnote 641:

Epiph. _Haer._ XXIV. c. 1, p. 145, Oehler. It is here attributed to

Basilides, but Epiphanius has before said that this last borrowed his

ideas from “Simon and Satornilus.”

Footnote 642:

Dan. X. 13.

Footnote 643:

Lucian, _Pseudomantis_, _passim_.

Footnote 644:

Epiphanius says that Simon taught none could be saved unless he

learned [Simon’s] system of initiation (μυσταγωγία). See Epiph.

_Haer._ XXI. c. 4, p. 127, Oehler.

Footnote 645:

Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 17, p. 195, Harvey.

Footnote 646:

Epiph. _Haer._ XXII. p. 133, Oehler; Eusebius, _Hist. Eccl._ Bk III.

c. 26. Cf. Justin Martyr, _First Apol._ c. 26. Schmiedel, _s.v._ Simon

Magus in _Encyc. Bibl._, says the exact contrary—a curious slip.

Footnote 647:

Theodoret, _Haer. Fab._ I. 1.

Footnote 648:

See note 7 _supra_.

Footnote 649:

Origen, _cont. Celsus_, Bk VI. c. 11.

Footnote 650:

Eusebius, _Hist. eccl._ Bk II. c. 13.

Footnote 651:

Tertullian, _Scorpiace_, c. 1. Eusebius, _H. E._ Bk II. c. 1, says,

speaking of his own times, that those who follow Simon’s most

scoundrelly (μιαρωτύτην) heresy were baptized into the Church, and

kept their own doctrines in secret till detected and expelled. Cf.

Origen, _c. Cels._ Bk VI. c. 11.

Footnote 652:

It was of course quite different from the Cabalistic methods,

ridiculous as those were, of the Essenes and other Jews, from the

acrostics of the Orphics, and from the allegories of Philo. With a

touching belief in the verbal inspiration of the Pentateuch, Simon and

his followers claimed that every word of it must be true and a

revelation even when transferred into another context. Thus they

claimed to teach obstetrics from geographical phrases. The only modern

parallel is to be found among the Puritans of our own Civil War, who,

as Sir Walter Scott wrote, were accustomed to pervert the language of

Scripture by adapting it to modern events, and kept a Bible lying on

the Table of the House for reference as to the better conduct of its

business.

Footnote 653:

See J. Turmel, “L’Angélologie depuis le faux Denys l’Aréopagite,”

_Rev. d’Hist. et Litt. Rel._ Paris, t. IV. No. 3 (1898), pp. 219

_sqq._

END OF VOL. I.

● Transcriber’s Notes:

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superscript “a”, are shown by the caret “^” character before the

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