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Title: Philosophumena, Volume II
Refutation of all Heresies
Author: Hippolytus
Translator: George Francis Legge
Release Date: January 7, 2022 [eBook #67116]
Language: English
Produced by: Wouter Franssen and the Online Distributed Proofreading
Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from
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Archive/Canadian Libraries)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PHILOSOPHUMENA, VOLUME
II ***
TRANSLATIONS OF CHRISTIAN LITERATURE
GENERAL EDITORS: W. J. SPARROW SIMPSON, D.D.
W. K. LOWTHER CLARKE, B.D.
SERIES I
GREEK TEXTS
PHILOSOPHUMENA
OR THE
REFUTATION OF ALL HERESIES
PHILOSOPHUMENA
OR THE
REFUTATION OF ALL HERESIES
FORMERLY ATTRIBUTED TO ORIGEN, BUT
NOW TO HIPPOLYTUS, BISHOP AND
MARTYR, WHO FLOURISHED
ABOUT 220 A.D.
TRANSLATED FROM THE TEXT OF CRUICE
BY
F. LEGGE, F.S.A.
VOL. II.
LONDON:
SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING
CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE
NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN CO.
1921
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY
RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED,
PARIS GARDEN, STAMFORD ST., S.E. 1,
AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.
CONTENTS
PAGE
BOOK VI: SIMON MAGUS, VALENTINUS, AND THEIR FOLLOWERS 1-57
1. SIMON 2
2. VALENTINUS 17
3. SECUNDUS AND EPIPHANES 38
4. PTOLEMY 39
5. MARCUS 40
BOOK VII: BASILIDES, SATURNILUS, AND OTHERS 58-97
1. BASILIDES 59
2. SATURNILUS 80
3. MARCION 82
4. CARPOCRATES 90
5. CERINTHUS 92
6. EBIONÆI 93
7. THEODOTUS THE BYZANTIAN 93
8. ANOTHER THEODOTUS 94
9. CERDO AND LUCIAN 95
10. APELLES 96
BOOK VIII: THE DOCETAE, MONOIMUS, AND OTHERS 98-116
1. THE DOCETAE 99
2. MONOIMUS 106
3. TATIAN 111
4. HERMOGENES 111
5. THE QUARTODECIMANS 112
6. THE PHRYGIANS 113
7. THE ENCRATITES 114
BOOK IX: NOETUS, CALLISTUS, AND OTHERS 117-148
1. NOETUS 118
2. CALLISTUS 124
3. THE ELCHESAITES 132
4. THE JEWS 138
BOOK X: SUMMARIES, AND THE WORD OF TRUTH 149-178
1. THE SUMMARY OF THE PHILOSOPHERS 150
2. THE SUMMARY OF THE HERESIES 153
3. THE WORD OF TRUTH 171
INDEX 179
PHILOSOPHUMENA
BOOK VI
SIMON MAGUS, VALENTINUS, AND THEIR FOLLOWERS
[Sidenote: p. 242 Cruice.] 1. These are the contents of the 6th (book)
of the _Refutation of all Heresies_.
2. What Simon has dared, and that his doctrine is confirmed (by
quotations) from magicians and poets.
3. What Valentinus has laid down, and that his doctrine is not framed
from the Scriptures, but from those of the Platonists and Pythagorists.
4. And what is thought by Secundus, Ptolemy and Heracleon, and how they
have used as their own, but with different words, the thoughts of those
whom the Greeks (think) wise.
5. What has been held by Marcus and Colarbasus [and their disciples]
and that some of them gave heed to magic arts and Pythagorean numbers.
6. Now such opinions as belong to those who have taken their principles
from the serpent[1] and, when the time arrived, of their own accord
brought their doctrines into light, we have set forth in the Book
before this, being the [Sidenote: p. 243.] Vth of the _Refutation
of all Heresies_. Here, however, I will not keep silence as to the
opinions of those who come after (them),[2] but will leave not one
unrefuted, if it be possible to keep them all in mind, together with
their secret rites which are justly to be called orgies, inasmuch as
those who dare such things are not far from God’s wrath[3]--to use the
word in its etymological sense.
1. _About Simon._
7. It seems then right now to set forth also the (doings) of Simon,[4]
the man of Gitto,[5] a village of Samaria, whereby we shall show that
those also who followed (him) taking hints from other names have
ventured upon like things. This Simon, being skilled in magic arts
and having played upon many, sometimes by the Thrasymedean[6] process
in the way we have set forth above, but sometimes working iniquity by
means of devils, designed to deify himself, (although only) a human
sorcerer filled with desperation whom the [Sidenote: p. 244.] Apostles
refuted in the _Acts_.[7] Than whom Apsethus the Libyan was much wiser
and more modest when he ambitiously attempted to be considered a god in
Libya. Whose story as it is not very different from the vain desire of
Simon, it seems fitting to narrate as one worthy to have been attempted
by Simon himself.
8. Apsethus the Libyan yearned to become a god. But since, after making
himself very busy, he utterly failed (to accomplish) his desire, he
wished at all events to appear to have become one, and seemed as if he
might really effect this in course of time. For the foolish Libyans
sacrificed to him as to some divine power, thinking that they must
give faith to a voice from heaven above. For he collected and shut up
in one and the same cage a great many of the birds called parrots;
there being many parrots in Libya who imitate quite clearly the human
voice. For some time he fed the birds and taught them to say “Apsethus
is a god”: and when the birds had been [Sidenote: p. 245.] trained
for a long time, and repeated the saying which he thought would make
Apsethus be considered a god, he opened the cage and let the parrots
out in all directions. The noise of the flying birds went forth into
all Libya, and their words reached as far as the land of the Greeks.[8]
And thus the Libyans being wonderstruck by the voices of the birds and
not understanding the trick played by Apsethus, held him for a god.
But a certain Greek having carefully studied the clever device of the
so-called god, not only refuted him by the (mouth of the) same parrots
but removed from the earth that human quack and rascal. The Greek
shut up many of the parrots and taught them to say instead (of their
former speech): “Apsethus shut us up and forced us to say: ‘Apsethus
is a god.’” And the Libyans hearing the parrots’ recantation (and) all
assembling with one mind burned Apsethus.[9]
9. This (sort of man) one must suppose Simon the magician (to be),
so that we would far sooner liken him to the Libyan who was born a
man than to (Him) who is really God.[10] But if the details of the
likeness be held accurate and the magician had some such passion as
Apsethus, we will undertake to teach Simon’s parrots that Simon who
stood, stands and will stand was not Christ, but [Sidenote: p. 246.]
a man (sprung) from seed, born of a woman[11] begotten from blood and
fleshly desire like the rest, and that he knew this to be so, we shall
easily show as the story goes on.[12] But Simon, stupidly and clumsily
garbling the Law of Moses--for when Moses has said that God was “a
burning and consuming fire,”[13]--he, not having received Moses’ saying
rightly, says that fire is the principle of the universals, and not
having comprehended the saying that God is not Fire, but a burning
and consuming fire, (thereby) not only rends in twain the Law of
Moses, but steals from Heraclitus the Obscure.[14] But Simon proclaims
that the principle of the universals is a boundless power, speaking
thus:--“This is the writing of the Announcement[15] of Voice and Name
from the Thought of the great power of the Boundless One. Wherefore it
will be sealed up, hidden, concealed and will be in the dwelling-place
where the root of the universals is founded.”[16] But he says that
the dwelling-place is the same man who has been begotten from blood
and that the [Sidenote: p. 247.] Boundless Power dwells in him, which
(power) he says is the root of the universals. But the Boundless Power,
the fire according to Simon, is not simple as the many say who think
that the four elements are simple and that fire is simple; but there is
a certain double nature of fire, and of this double nature he calls one
part hidden and the other manifest. But the hidden (parts) have been
hidden in the manifest parts of the fire, and the manifest have come
into being by the hidden. This it is which Aristotle calls potentiality
and action, and Plato the comprehensible and the perceptible.[17]
And the manifest (part) of the fire contains within itself all which
one can perceive[18] or which can escape one, but remains visible;
but the hidden (part) contains everything which one can perceive as
something intelligible but which evades the sense or which as not
being thoroughly understood one passes over. But it must be said
generally that of all things which are perceptible and intelligible,
which Simon calls hidden and manifest,[19] the supercelestial fire is
the Treasure-house,[20] like unto the great tree which was seen by
Nebuchadnezzar in a dream, from which all flesh is fed.[21] [Sidenote:
p. 248.] And he considers the trunk, the boughs, the leaves, and the
bark on the outside of it to be the manifest part of the fire. All
these things which are attached to the great tree the flame of the
all-devouring fire causes to vanish. But the fruit of the tree, if
it be made a perfect likeness[22] and has received its own shape, is
placed in a storehouse and not in the fire. For the fruit, he says, has
been produced that it may be put in a storehouse, but the chaff that
it may be cast into the fire, which (chaff) is the trunk which has not
been produced for its own sake, but for that of the fruit.
10. And this is, he says, what is written in the Scripture: “The
vine of the Lord Sabaoth is the house of Israel, and a man of Judah
his beloved plant.”[23] But if a man of Judah is his beloved plant,
it proves, he says, that a tree is nothing else than a man. But of
its secretion and dissolution, he says, the Scripture has spoken
sufficiently, and for the instruction of those who have been made
completely after (its) likeness,[24] the saying is enough that: “All
flesh is grass and all the glory of the flesh as the flower of grass.
The grass withereth and the flower fadeth away: but the word [Sidenote:
p. 249.] of the Lord abideth for ever.”[25] But the word, he says, is
the word and speech of the Lord born in the mouth, save which there is
no other place of generation.
11. But, to be brief, since the fire is such according to Simon,
and all things are seen and unseen as they are heard and unheard,
numbered and unnumbered, in the _Great Announcement_ he calls a perfect
intellectual[26] every one of those (beings) which can be boundlessly
conceived by the mind in a boundless way[27] and can speak and think
and act, as says Empedocles:--
For earth by earth we see, and water by water
And (divine) æther by æther, yet destroying fire by fire,
And (love) by love, and strife in gloomy strife.--
(Karsten, v. 321.)
12. For, he says, he considered all the parts of the fire which
are invisible to have sense and a share of mind.[28] [Sidenote: p.
250.] Therefore the cosmos, he says, came into being begotten by the
unbegotten fire. But it began to be, he says, after this fashion:--He
who was produced from the beginning from that fire took six roots,
the first ones of the principle of generation.[29] And he says that
the roots came from the fire in pairs, which roots he calls Mind and
Thought, Voice and Name, Reasoning and Passion,[30] but that the whole
of the Boundless Power together is in these six roots potentially,
but not actively. The which Boundless Power he says is He who Stood,
Stands, and will Stand. Who if he be made into a complete image (of
the fire) will be in substance, power, greatness, and effect one and
the same with that Unbegotten and Boundless Power, and lacking nothing
possessed by that unbegotten and unchanging and infinite power. But if
he remains potentially only in the six powers and is not made into a
complete image (of the fire), he is done away with and is lost like as
the capacity for grammar or geometry in man’s soul. For power taking
[Sidenote: p. 251.] to itself skill becomes a light of the things which
are: but if it does not take unto itself (skill) it is unskilfulness
and darkness and as if it were not, it perishes[31] with the man at his
death.
13. But of these six powers and the seventh which is with the six, he
calls the first pair, (to wit) Nous and Epinoia, Heaven and Earth. And
(he says) that the masculine (partner) looks down from on high upon
and takes thought for his spouse and that the Earth below receives the
intellectual fruits proper to her brought down from Heaven to Earth.
Wherefore, he says, the Logos beholding often the things born from Nous
and Epinoia, that is from Heaven and Earth, says: “Hear, O Heaven,
and give ear, O Earth, for the Lord has spoken. I have begotten and
raised up sons, but they have disregarded me.”[32] He who thus speaks,
he says, is the Seventh Power who Stood, Stands and will Stand. For
he is the cause of those fair things which Moses praised and said
that [Sidenote: p. 252.] they were very good. And Phone and Onoma are
the Sun and Moon, and Logismos and Enthymesis Air and Water. But with
all these is mingled and compounded, as I have said, the great and
Boundless Power, He who has Stood.[33]
14. Since, therefore, Moses spake: “In six days God created Heaven and
Earth and the seventh day he rested from all his works,”[34] Simon
after re-arranging the passage, makes himself out a god. When then they
say that three days passed before the Sun and Moon existed,[35] they
shadow forth Nous and Epinoia and the Seventh Power, the Boundless
One. For these three powers were born before all the others. When they
say: “Before all the Aeons He has begotten me,”[36] (Simon) says that
this was spoken of the Seventh Power. But the same Seventh Power,
which was a power existing in the Boundless Power which was begotten
before all the Aeons, this is, he says, the Seventh Power of whom Moses
said: “And the Spirit of God was borne above the water,”[37] that is,
he says, the spirit containing [Sidenote: p. 253.] all things within
itself, an image of the Boundless Power, of whom Simon says “image of
the imperishable form which alone orders all things.” For that power
which was borne above the water having come into being, he says, from
the imperishable form, alone orders all things. Now when some such
and like preparations of the cosmos had come to pass, God, he says,
moulded[38] man, taking dust from the earth. But he fashioned him not
simple but twofold[39] according to image and resemblance. But the
spirit which was borne above the water is an image, which spirit if it
is not made a complete likeness,[40] perishes with the world, as it
abides only potentially and does not exist in activity. This, he says,
is the saying, “Lest ye be judged with the world.”[41] But if it be
made a complete likeness and is born from an Indivisible Point as it is
written in the Announcement, the small will become great. But it will
be great in the Boundless and Unchanging Aeon, being born no more.
How then and in what manner, he says, did God form man in Paradise?
For this is his opinion. Let, he says, Paradise be the womb, and that
this is true the Scripture teaches when it says: “I am he who fashioned
thee in thy mother’s womb.”[42] For this also he wishes to be thus
[Sidenote: p. 254.] written. Moses, he says, speaking in allegory,
calls Paradise the womb if we are to believe the word. But if God
fashions man in the womb of his mother, that is, in Paradise, as I have
said, let Paradise be the womb and Edem the placenta: “And a river went
forth from Edem and watered Paradise”[43] (this is) the navel-string.
The navel-string, he says, separates into four heads. For on each side
of the navel are set two arteries, conduits of breath, and two veins,
conduits of blood. But when he says, the navel-string goes forth from
the placenta it takes root in the infant by the epigastrium which all
men commonly call the navel. And the two veins it is through which
flows and is borne from Edem (the placenta) the blood to the so-called
gates of the liver whence the child is fed. But the arteries as we
have said, are the conduits of the breath[44] which pass behind on
either side of the bladder round the pelvis and make connection with
the great artery by the spine called the aorta, and thus through the
ventricles the breath flows upon the heart and causes [Sidenote: p.
255.] movement of the embryo. For the embryo in course of formation
in Paradise neither takes food by the mouth, nor breathes through the
nostrils. For, as it exists amid waters, death is at its feet if it
should breathe. For it would then draw in the waters and die. But it
is girt about almost wholly by the envelope called the amnion and is
fed through the navel, and through the aorta which is by the spine, it
receives, as I have said[45] the substance of the breath.
15. Therefore, he says, the river flowing forth from Edem separates
into four heads (or) four conduits, that is, into the child’s four
senses, sight, smell, taste, and touch. For the infant while being
formed in Paradise has these senses only. This, he says, is the Law
which Moses laid down; and agreeably with that same Law each of the
Books is written, as their titles clearly show. The first book (is)
_Genesis_ (and) the title of the book, he says, suffices for the
knowledge of the universals. For, he says, this is genesis, that is
sight into which one of the sections of the river separates; [Sidenote:
p. 256.] for the world is seen by sight. The title of the second book
is _Exodus_. For that which is born after crossing the Red Sea comes
into the Desert--he calls the blood, he says, the Red Sea--and tastes
bitter water. For bitter, he says, is the water which comes after the
Red Sea, which (water) is the way of knowledge of life pursued through
painful and bitter things. But when changed by Moses, that is by the
Logos, that bitter (water) becomes sweet. And that this is so, can be
known by all in common in the saying of the poets:--
Black was it at the root, but the flower was like milk
The gods call it Moly, but hard it is to dig
For mortal men, but to the gods all things are possible.--
(HOMER, _Odyssey_, X, 304 ff.)
16. What has been said by the nations, he says, suffices for the
thorough knowledge of the universals to those who have ears to hear.
For not only he who has tasted this fruit is not turned into a beast
by Circe; but those also [Sidenote: p. 257.] who have been already
brutified by use of the powers of such fruit, he moulds again into
their first and proper form and restores them to type and recalls
their (original) impress. And the faithful man and he who is beloved
by that witch is, he says, revealed through that milk-like and divine
fruit. Likewise _Leviticus_ the third book which is the smell or
inspiration.[46] For this book is of sacrifices and oblations. For
where there is a sacrifice there comes a certain savour of fragrance
from it through the incense, of which fragrance the sense of smell
(ought to be a test).[47] _Numbers_, the fourth book he calls taste ...[48]
where speech operates. But _Deuteronomy_, he says, is written
with reference to the sense of touch of the child in course of
formation. For as the touch, touching the things perceived by the other
senses, sums up and confirms them, teaching us whether (anything) be
hard or hot or cold,[49] so the fifth book of the Law is the summary
of the four books written before it. All the unbegotten things, then,
he says, are in potentiality not in activity, like the grammatical
or [Sidenote: p. 258.] geometrical art. If then one should chance
upon the fitting word and doctrine, and the bitter should be changed
into sweet, that is, the spears into reaping-hooks and the swords
into ploughshares,[50] (the child) will not be chaff and sticks for
producing fire, but a perfect fruit made in semblance (of), as I have
said (and) equal and like to, the Unbegotten and Boundless Power.
But should he remain only a tree and should not make a perfect fruit
fashioned in complete resemblance, he will be removed. For the axe is
near, he says, to the roots of the tree. Every tree, he says, which
maketh not fair fruit is cut down and cast into the fire.[51]
17. There is then, according to Simon, that blessed and incorruptible
thing hidden in everything, potentially not actively, which is He who
Stood, Stands and will Stand. It stood above in the Unbegotten Power,
it stands below amid the rush of the waters having been begotten in
likeness, and it will stand on high beside the blessed Unbegotten Power
if it be made in (his) perfect semblance. For there are, he says, three
who have stood, and unless there are [Sidenote: p. 259.] three Aeons
who have stood, then the Unbegotten One who according to them is borne
over the water, who by resemblance has been fashioned again perfect
(and) heavenly, who in one thought alone[52] is more lacking than the
Unbegotten Power, is not in its proper place.[53] This is what they
say: “I and thou, thou one before me, I after thee, am I.” This, he
says, is one power, divided above, below, begetting itself, increasing
itself, seeking itself, finding itself, being its own mother, its own
father, its own sister, its own spouse, its own daughter, its own son,
a mother-father,[54] being one root of the universals.
And that, he says, the beginning of the generation of things begotten
is from fire, he understands in some such fashion as this: In all
things whatever which have birth, the beginning of the desire of
generation comes from fire. As, for instance, the desire for mutable
generation[55] is called “being inflamed” [with love]. But the fire
from being one, turns into two. For in the man, he says, the blood
which is hot and yellow as fire is depicted, turns into seed; but in
the woman the selfsame blood (turns) into milk. [Sidenote: p. 260.]
And from the turning in the male comes generation and from that in
the female the nourishment of that which is generated.[56] This, he
says, is the flaming sword turning about to guard the path to the Tree
of Life. For the blood is turned to seed and milk and the same power
becomes father and mother of those which are born and the increase of
those which are nourished, itself lacking nothing and being sufficient
unto itself. But the Tree of Life is guarded he says, through the
turning of the flaming sword, as we have said, which (sword) is the
Seventh Power which is from itself, which contains all things (and)
which lies stored up in the six powers. For if the flaming sword did
not turn about, that fair tree would perish and be destroyed. But if
the Logos which is lying stored up potentially therein, is turned into
seed and milk, being lord of its proper place wherein is begotten a
Logos of souls,--then from the smallest spark it will become great and
increase in every sense and will be a boundless power unchangeable in
the aeon which changes not until it is in the Boundless Aeon.[57]
18. By this argument, then, Simon avowedly became a god to those
of no understanding, like that Apsethus the [Sidenote: p. 261.]
Libyan, being (said to be) begotten and subject to suffering when he
existed potentially, but (becoming) impassible (from passible, and
unbegotten)[58] from begotten when he was made in perfect semblance and
becoming perfect came forth from the first two powers, that is Heaven
and Earth. For Simon speaks explicitly of this in the _Announcement_,
thus:--
“Unto you I say what I say, and I write what I write. The writing
is this. There are two stems[59] of all the Aeons, having neither
beginning nor end, from one root, which is Power-Silence[60] unseen
and incomprehensible. One of them appears on high, who is a great
power, the mind of the universals, who orders all things and (is) a
male. And the other below is a great Thought, a female giving birth to
all things. These, then, being set over against each other[61] form a
pair and show forth the middle space, an incomprehensible air having
neither beginning nor end. In this (space) is a Father who upholds all
things and nourishes those which have a beginning and end. This is
He who Stood, Stands, and will Stand, being a masculo-feminine power
after the likeness of the pre-existing Boundless Power[62] which has
neither beginning nor end but exists in oneness. For the thought which
came forth from the (power) in oneness was two. And that was one. For
he [Sidenote: p. 262.] when he contained her within himself was alone,
nor was he indeed first although he existed beforehand, but having
himself appeared from himself, a second came into being. But he was
not called Father until she named him Father. Just as then he, drawing
himself forth from himself, manifested to himself his own thought, so
also the thought having appeared did not create him; but beholding
him, hid the Father--that is Power--within herself;[63] and there is a
masculo-feminine Power-and-Thought when they are set over against each
other. For Power does not differ at all from thought, they being one.
From the things on high is discovered Power; from those below Thought.
Thus then it is that that which appeared from them being one is found
to be two, a masculo-feminine having the female within it. This is Mind
in Thought for they being one when undivided from one another are yet
found to be two.”
19. Simon then having discovered (all) this, fraudulently interprets
as he wishes not only the (words) of Moses, but [Sidenote: p. 263.]
also those of the poets. For he turns into allegory the Wooden Horse
and Helen with the Torch and other things, altering which to the
affairs of himself and his Epinoia, he leads astray many. And he
says that she is that sheep which was lost, who ever dwelling in
many women[64] troubles the powers in the cosmos by her transcendent
beauty. Wherefore also the Trojan War occurred on account of her. For
Epinoia herself dwelt in Helen at that time, and all the authorities
suing for her (favours), faction and war arose among the nations in
which she appeared. Wherefore indeed Stesichorus having railed at her
in his verses had his eyes blinded, but having repented and written
the Palinode, was restored to sight.[65] She, being changed from one
body to another by the angels and authorities below [Sidenote: p.
264.] who made the world, came at last to stand in a brothel[66] in
Tyre, a city of Phœnicia, coming to which (Simon) found her. For at
her first enquiry, he said he had come to her aid, that he might free
her from her bonds, and when he had redeemed her she went about with
him pretending that she was the lost sheep, and he saying that he was
the Power above all things. But the rogue having fallen in love with
the hussy, the so-called Helen, and having bought her enjoyed her, and
being ashamed (before) his disciples made up this story. But they who
became (in time) the imitators of the error and of Simon Magus do like
things, pretending that they ought to have (promiscuous) intercourse
like beasts, saying: “All earth is earth and it matters not where one
sows, so long as one sows.” And they also bless this intercourse saying
that the same is perfect love and the “Holy of Holies” and that “ye
shall sanctify one another.” For they say that they are not overcome by
what any one else would call evil, for that they have been redeemed.
And that Simon having redeemed Helen has in like manner [Sidenote: p.
265.] brought salvation to men through his own discernment.[67] For
since the angels misgoverned the world through love of rule, he says
that he came to set it straight, having changed his shape and making
himself like the rulers[68] and authorities and angels, and that he
appeared as a man, though he was not a man and seemed to suffer in
Judæa, though he did not suffer.[69] But he appeared to the Jews as
Son, in Samaria as Father, and among the other nations as Holy Spirit.
And that he submitted to be called by whatever name men wished to call
him. And that the Prophets were inspired by the world-making angels to
utter their prophecies. Wherefore they who have believed on Simon and
Helen do not heed them,[70] and to this day do what they will as being
free. For they claim that they have been saved by his grace. For no one
is liable to judgment if he does anything evil; for evil exists not by
nature, but by [Sidenote: p. 266.] law. For he says it is the angels
who made the world who made the Law whatever they wished, thinking to
enslave those who hearkened to them. And again they say that (there
will be) a dissolution of the world for the redemption of their own
men.[71]
20. Therefore the disciples of this (man) practise magic arts and
incantations, and send out love-philtres and charms and the demons
called dream-bringers for the troubling of whom they will. But they
also do reverence to the so-called Paredri.[72] And they have an image
of Simon in the form of Zeus, and (another) of Helen in the form of
Athena, and they bow down to them calling the one “Lord” and the other
“Lady.”[73] But if any one among them seeing these images should call
them by the name of Simon or Helen, he is cast out as being ignorant of
their mysteries. This Simon when he had led astray many in Samaria by
magic arts was refuted by the Apostles, and [Sidenote: p. 267.] having
been laid under a curse as it is written in the _Acts_, afterwards in
desperation designed these things[74] until having come to Rome, he
withstood the Apostles. Whom Peter opposed when he was deceiving many
by sorceries. He at length coming into t......te,[75] taught sitting
under a plane-tree. And finally his refutation being very near[76]
through effluxion of time, he said that if buried alive he would rise
again the third day. And having given orders that a grave should be
dug by his disciples, he bade them bury him. And they having done
what he commanded, he remains there to this day; for he was not the
Christ. This then is Simon’s story, taking hints from which Valentinus
calls (the same things) by other names. For Nous and Aletheia, Logos
and Zoe, Anthropos and Ecclesia are Simon’s six roots, Nous-Epinoia,
Phone-Onoma, Logismos-Enthymesis. But since we have sufficiently set
forth Simon’s fable making, let us see what Valentinus says.[77]
2. _Concerning Valentinus._
[Sidenote: p. 268.] 21. The heresy of Valentinus,[78] then, exists,
having a Pythagorean and Platonic foundation. For Plato in the
_Timæus_ modelled himself entirely on Pythagoras, as is seen also by
his “Pythagorean stranger” being Timæus himself. Wherefore it seems
fitting that we should begin by recalling to mind a few (points) of the
theory of Pythagoras and Plato, and should then describe the (teaching)
of Valentinus. For if the opinions of Pythagoras and Plato are also
included in the (books) painfully written by us earlier, yet I shall
not be unreasonable in recalling[79] in epitome their most leading
tenets[80] in order that by their closer comparison and likeness of
composition, the doctrines of Valentinus may be more intelligible. For
as (the Pythagoreans and Platonists) took their opinions of old from
the Egyptians and taught them anew to the Greeks, so (Valentinus) while
fraudulently attempting to establish his own teaching by them, carved
[Sidenote: p. 269.] their system into names and numbers, calling them
[by names] and defining them by measures of his own. Whence he has
constructed a heresy Greek indeed, but not referable to Christ.
22. The wisdom of the Egyptians is, then, the beginning of Plato’s
theory in the _Timæus_. For from this, Solon[81] taught the Greeks the
whole position regarding the birth and destruction of the cosmos by
means of a certain prophetic statement, as Plato says, the Greeks being
then children and knowing no older theologic learning. In order then
that we may follow closely the words which Valentinus let fall, I will
now set out as preface what it was that Pythagoras of Samos taught as
philosophy after that silence praised by the Greeks. And then [I will
point out] those things which Valentinus takes from Pythagoras and
Plato and with solemn words attributes to Christ, and before Christ to
the Father of the universals and to that Sige who is given as a spouse
to the Father.
23. Now Pythagoras declared that the unbegotten monad was the principle
of the universals[82] and the parent of the dyad and of all the other
numbers. And he says that the [Sidenote: p. 270.] monad is the father
of the dyad and the dyad the mother of all engendered things (and)
a bearer of things begotten. And Zaratas,[83] also, the teacher of
Pythagoras, calls the one father, but the two, mother. For the dyad has
come into being from a monad according to Pythagoras, and the monad is
masculine and first, but the dyad female and second. From the dyad,
again, as Pythagoras says, (come) the triad and the other numbers one
after the other up to 10. For Pythagoras knew that this 10 is the only
perfect number.[84] For (he saw that) the 11 and 12 were an addition
to and re-equipment of the decad, and not the generation of some
other number. All solid bodies beget what is given to them from the
bodiless.[85] For, he says, the Point which is indivisible is at once a
point and a beginning of the bodies and the bodiless together. And, he
says, from the point comes a line, and a superficies extended in depth
makes, he says, a solid figure. Whence the Pythagoreans have a certain
oath as to the harmony of the four elements. And they make oath thus:--
[Sidenote: p. 271.] “Yea by the Tetractys handed down to our head
A source of eternal nature containing within itself roots.”[86]
For the beginning of natural and solid bodies is the Tetractys as the
monad is of the intelligible ones.[87] But that the Tetractys gives
birth to the perfect number as among the intelligibles the (monad) does
to the 10, they teach thus. If one beginning to count, says 1, and adds
2, and then 3 in like manner, these will make 6. (Add) yet another (_i.
e._) 4 and there in the same way will be the total 10. For the 1, 2, 3
and 4 become 10, the perfect number. Thus, he says, the Tetractys will
in all things imitate the intelligible monad having been thus able to
bring forth a perfect number.
24. There are, therefore, according to Pythagoras, two worlds, one
intelligible which has the monad as its beginning, but the other the
perceptible. This last is the Tetractys containing Iota,[88] the one
tittle, a perfect number. [Sidenote: p. 272.] Thus the Iota, the one
tittle, is received by the Pythagoreans as the first and chiefest, and
as the substance of the Intelligible both intelligibly and perceptibly.
Belonging to which are the nine bodiless accidents which cannot exist
apart from substance, (viz.) Quantity, Quality, Wherefore, Where,
and When, and also Being, Having, Doing and Suffering.[89] There are
therefore nine accidents to substance reckoned in with which they
comprise[90] the perfect number, the 10. Wherefore the universe being
divided, as we have said, into an intelligible and a perceptible world,
we have also reason from the intelligible in order that by it we may
behold the substance of the intelligible, the bodiless and the divine.
But we have, he says, five senses, smell, sight, hearing, taste and
touch. By these we arrive at a knowledge of perceptible things, and
so, he says, the perceptible world is separated from the intelligible;
and that we have an organ of knowledge for each of them, we learn
from this. None of the intelligibles, he says, can become known to us
through sense: for, he says, eye has not seen that, nor ear heard, nor
has it become known, he says, by any other of the senses whatever.
Nor again by reason can one come to a knowledge of the perceptible;
[Sidenote: p. 273.] but one must see that a thing is white, and taste
that it is sweet, and know by hearing that it is just or unjust; and
if any smell is fragrant or nauseous, that is the work of the sense
of smell and not of the reason. And it is the same with the things
relating to touch. For that a thing is hard or soft or hot or cold
cannot be known through the hearing, but the test of these things is
the touch. This being granted, the setting in order of the things that
have been and are is seen to come about arithmetically. For, just as
we, beginning by addition of monads (or dyads) or triads and of the
other numbers strung together, make one very large compound number, and
on the other hand work by subtracting from the total strung together
and by analysing by a fresh calculation what has been brought together
arithmetically;--so, he says, the cosmos is bound together by a certain
arithmetical and musical bond, and by its tightening and slackening,
its addition and subtraction, is ever and everywhere preserved
uncorrupted.
25. For instance in some such fashion as this also do the Pythagoreans
describe the duration of the world:--
[Sidenote: p. 274.] “For it was before and will be. Never I ween
Will the unquenchable aeon be devoid of these two.”
What are these (two)? Strife and Love.[91] But their love makes the
cosmos incorruptible and eternal, as they think. For substance and the
cosmos are one. But strife rends asunder and diversifies, and tries by
every means to make the world divide. Just as one cuts arithmetically
the myriad into thousands and hundreds and tens and drachmas, and
obols, and quarters by dividing it into small parts, so Strife cuts
the substance of the cosmos into animals, plants, metals and such
like things. And Strife is according to them, the Demiurge[92] of the
generation of all things coming to pass, and Love governs and provides
for the universe, so that it abides. And having collected into one the
scattered and rent (things) of the universe and leading them forth from
life, it joins and adds them to the universe so that it may abide and
be one. Never therefore will Strife cease from dividing the cosmos, nor
Love from attaching together [Sidenote: p. 275.] the separated things
of the cosmos. Something like this it seems is the “distribution”[93]
according to Pythagoras. But Pythagoras says that the stars are
fragments[94] of the sun and that the souls of animals are borne (to
us) from the stars. And that the same (souls) are mortal when they
are in the body being buried as it were in a tomb; but that they will
rise again and become immortal when we are separated from our bodies.
Whence Plato being asked by some one what Philosophy is, said: “It is a
separation of soul from body.”
26. Pythagoras, then, becoming a learner of these opinions, declared
some of them by means of enigmas and such like phrases, (such as:)
“If you are away from home, turn not back. Otherwise, the Furies the
helpers of justice will punish you.”[95] (For) he calls your home the
body and [Sidenote: p. 276.] the passions the Furies. If then, he says,
you are away from home, that is: if you have come forth from the body,
do not seek after it; but if you return to it, the passions will again
shut you up in a body. For they think there is a change of bodies
(μετενσωμάτωσις); as also Empedocles, when Pythagorizing, says. For the
pleasure-loving souls, as Plato says,[96] if they do not philosophize
when in man’s estate, must pass through the bodies of all animals and
plants and again return to a human body. But if (such a one) does
philosophize,[97] he will in the same way go on high thrice to his
kindred star; but if he does not philosophize will return again to the
same things. Thus he tells us that the soul is at once mortal if it be
ruled by the Furies, that is, by the Passions, and immortal if it flees
from them.
27. But seeing that we have picked out for narration the things darkly
uttered to his disciples under the veil of symbols, it seems fitting
to recall other sayings (of his), because the heresiarchs attempt to
deal in symbols in the same way; and these not their own, but using the
words of Pythagoras. [Sidenote: p. 277.] Now Pythagoras teaches his
disciples saying “Bind up the bed-sack,” since they who are setting out
on a journey make their clothing into a bundle, so as to be ready for
the road. Thus he wishes his disciples to be ready, as if at any moment
death might come upon them, so that they may not be caught lacking
anything. Wherefore he is obliged to enjoin the Pythagorean every
morning to bind up the bed-sack, that is to prepare for death. “Do not
stir the fire with a sword,” meaning do not provoke angry men; for he
likens an angry man to a fire and speech to a sword. “Do not tread on
sweepings,” that is, do not look down upon trifles. “Do not grow a palm
in a house,” that is, do not make a cause of strife in it. For the palm
is a symbol of fighting and strife. “Eat not from a stool” (that is),
practise no ignoble art, that you may not be a slave to the corruptible
body, but make your livelihood by lectures. For it is possible at
once to nourish the body [Sidenote: p. 278.] and to improve the soul.
“From a whole loaf bite off nought,” (that is) diminish not that which
belongs to you, but live on the income and keep the capital like a
whole loaf. “Eat not beans” (that is) Take not the rule of a city. For
by beans the rulers[98] were then elected.[99]
28. These and such like things, then, the Pythagoreans say, imitating
whom the heretics think they declare great things to certain men. The
Pythagorean doctrine says that the Great Geometrician and Reckoner[100]
the Sun is the Demiurge of all things that are, and is fixed in the
whole cosmos like the soul in bodies, as says Plato. For the Sun like
the soul is fire, but the earth a body. But if fire were absent,
nothing could be seen, nor could there be any solid perceptible to
the touch; for there is no solid without earth. Whence God having put
air in the midst, fashioned the body of the universe from fire and
earth.[101] But the Sun reckons and measures the cosmos in some such
fashion as this. The cosmos is that perceptible one of which we are now
speaking. But (the Sun) divides it as an arithmetician and geometrician
into twelve parts. And the names of these [Sidenote: p. 279.] parts
are:--Ram, Bull, Twins, Crab, Lion, Virgin, Scales, Scorpion, Archer,
He-goat, Waterbearer and Fishes. Again, he divides each of the twelve
parts into thirty which are the thirty days of the month. And again he
divides each of the thirty parts into sixty minutes and (each) minute
into yet smaller and smaller parts. And thus ever creating without
ceasing, but gathering together from these divided parts and making a
cycle, and again dissolving it and separating that which has been put
together, he perfects the great deathless cosmos.[102]
29. Something like this, as I have just summarily said, is the teaching
framed by Pythagoras and Plato. From which and not from the Gospels,
Valentinus has drawn his own heresy, as we shall show, and should
therefore be reckoned a Pythagorean and a Platonist, but not as a
Christian. Accordingly he and Heracleon and Ptolemy and all their
school, the disciples of Pythagoras and Plato copying their teachers,
have framed an arithmetical doctrine of their own. [Sidenote: p. 280.]
For indeed an unbegotten, incorruptible, incomprehensible fruitful
Monad is to them the beginning of all and the cause of the birth of all
things that are. Yet a certain wide difference is found among them. For
some of them, that they may keep wholly pure the Pythagorean teaching
of Valentinus, consider the Father to be unfeminine,[103] spouseless,
and alone: whereas the others, thinking it absolutely impossible that
there could be a birth of all things that have been born from any
single male, are compelled to reckon Sige[104] as a spouse to the
Father of the universals in order that he may become a father. But
as to whether Sige is a spouse or not, let them fight it out with
each other.[105] We, keeping steadfast at present to the Pythagorean
(doctrine of) the beginning and remembering what others teach, say
that He is one, without spouse, without female, in need of nought. In
a word (Valentinus) says at the beginning nothing was begotten, but
the Father was alone, unbegotten, having neither place, nor time, nor
counsellor, nor any other thing that by any figure of speech could be
understood as essence.[106] But He was alone and solitary, as they
say, and resting alone within Himself. And when He was filled with
fruit, He saw fit to beget and bring forth the most [Sidenote: p.
281.] beautiful and perfect thing He had within Himself. For He did
not love to be alone.[107] For He, Valentinus says, was all Love and
love is not love unless there be something to be loved. Then the Father
himself projected and engendered, as He was alone, Mind and Truth,[108]
that is a dyad, which became the lady and beginning and mother of all
the aeons reckoned by them as being within the Pleroma. But Nous and
Aletheia having been projected by the Father, a fruitful (projection)
from the fruitful, imitating the Father projected also the Word and
Life;[109] and Logos and Zoe projected Man and the Church.[110] But
Nous and Aletheia when they saw that their own special progeny had
become fruitful, gave thanks to the Father of the universals and
offered to him a perfect number, ten Aeons. For than this, he says,
Nous and Aletheia could offer to the Father no more perfect number. For
the Father being perfect ought to be glorified with a perfect number.
And the ten is perfect because as the first of things that came into
being by addition, it is complete.[111] But the Father is more perfect
because he [Sidenote: p. 282.] alone is unbegotten, and by the first
single syzygy of Nous and Aletheia supplied the projection of all the
roots of the things that are.
30. Then when Logos and Zoe saw that Nous and Aletheia had glorified
the Father of the universals in a perfect number, Logos himself with
Zoe[112] also wished to glorify his own father and mother, Nous and
Aletheia. But since Nous and Aletheia were begotten and did not possess
the complete paternal unbegotten nature,[113] Logos and Zoe did not
glorify their father Nous with a perfect number, but with an imperfect
one: for Logos and Zoe offer twelve Aeons to Nous and Aletheia. For
the first roots of the Aeons according to Valentinus were Nous and
Aletheia, Logos and Zoe, Anthropos and Ecclesia. But there are twelve
Aeons two of which are the children of Nous and Aletheia and ten those
of Logos and Zoe, in all twenty-eight. And these are the names by
which they call (the ten): Profound and Mixture, Who-grows-not-old
and Oneness, Self-grown and [Sidenote: p. 283.] Pleasure, Unmoved and
Blending, Unique and Blessedness.[114] Of these ten Aeons some say
that they are by Nous and Aletheia and others by Logos and Zoe; and
there are twelve others which some say are by Anthropos and Ecclesia
and others by Logos and Zoe. To whom they give these names: Paraclete
and Faith, Fatherly and Hope, Motherly and Love, Ever-thinking and
Union, Of the Church and Blessed, Beloved and Wisdom.[115] Of the
twelve the twelfth and youngest of all the twenty-four Aeons who was
a female and called Sophia,[116] perceived the multitude and power of
the Aeons who had been begotten and shot up into the Height of the
Father. And she comprehended that all the other begotten Aeons existed
and had been brought forth in pairs, but that the Father alone produced
without a partner. She wished to imitate the Father and gave birth
by herself and apart from her spouse, so that she might work no work
lacking anything more than did the work of the Father, [Sidenote: p.
284.] being ignorant that only the Unbegotten principle and root and
height and depth of the universals can possibly bring forth alone.
For in the Unbegotten, he says, all things exist together; but among
the begotten the female is the projector of substance, but the male
gives form to the substance[117] which the female projects. Therefore
Sophia projected only that which she could, a substance shapeless
and unformed.[118] And this, he says, is what Moses said: “Now the
earth was invisible and unformed.”[118] She, he says, is the good or
heavenly Jerusalem into which God declared he would lead the children
of Israel, saying: “I will lead you into a good land flowing with milk
and honey.”[119]
31. Ignorance, then, having come about within the Pleroma by Sophia,
and formlessness by the offspring of Sophia, confusion came to pass
within it. For the Aeons (feared) that what was born from them would be
born [Sidenote: p. 285.] shapeless and imperfect, and that corruption
would before long destroy them. Then all the Aeons took refuge in
prayers to the Father that he would give rest to the sorrowing Sophia.
For she was weeping and mourning over the Abortion[120] brought forth
by her--for so they call it. Then the Father took pity on the tears
of Sophia, and hearkened to the prayers of the Aeons and commanded a
projection to be made. For he himself did not project, but Nous and
Aletheia projected Christ and the Holy Spirit for the giving form to
and the separation of the Ectroma and the relief and intermission of
the groans of Sophia. And thirty Aeons came into existence with Christ
and the Holy Spirit. But some of them will have it that there is a
triacontad of Aeons, but others that Sige co-exists with the Father,
and wish the Aeons to be counted in with those (two). Then, when Christ
and the Holy Spirit had been projected[121] by Nous and Aletheia, he
straightway separates from the complete Aeons Ectroma, the shapeless
and unique[122] thing which had been brought forth by Sophia apart
from her [Sidenote: p. 286.] spouse, so that the perfect Aeons might
not be troubled by the sight of her shapelessness. Then, that the
shapelessness of Ectroma might no way be apparent to the perfect Aeons,
the Father again projected one Aeon (to wit) the Cross, who having been
born great from the great and perfect Father and projected as a guard
and palisade to the Aeons, becomes the limit of the Pleroma containing
within him all the thirty Aeons together: for they were projected
before him. And he is called Horos because he separates from the
Pleroma the Void[123] without; and Metocheus[124] because he partakes
also in the Hysterema; and Stauros because he is fixed unbendingly and
unchangeably, so that nothing from the Hysterema can abide near the
Aeons who [Sidenote: p. 287.] are within the Pleroma. And when Sophia
Without had been transformed and it was not possible for Christ and the
Holy Spirit, the projections of Nous and Aletheia, to remain outside
the Pleroma, they returned from her who had been transformed, to Nous
and Aletheia within Horos, so that he with the other Aeons might
glorify the Father.
32. Since then there was a certain single peace and harmony of all
the Aeons within the Pleroma, it seemed good to them not only to have
glorified the Father in pairs, but also to glorify him by the offering
to him of fitting fruits. Therefore all the thirty Aeons were well
pleased to project one Aeon, the Common Fruit of the Pleroma, so that
he might be the (fruit) of their unity and likemindedness and peace.
And as He alone was projected by all the Father’s Aeons, He is called
by them the Common Fruit of the Pleroma. Thus then were things within
the Pleroma. And the Common Fruit of the Pleroma was projected, (to
wit) Jesus--for that is His name--the Great High Priest. [Sidenote:
p. 288.] But Sophia without the Pleroma seeking after Christ, who
had given her shape and the Holy Spirit, stood in great fear, lest
she might perish when separated from Him who had given her shape and
had established her. And she mourned and was in great perplexity
considering who it was that had given her shape, who the Holy Spirit
was, whence she had gone forth, who had hindered them from coming near
her, (and) who had begrudged her that fair and blessed vision. Brought
low by these passions, she turns to beseeching supplication of Him who
had left her. Then Christ who was within the Pleroma had compassion
on her beseeching, as had all the Aeons of the Pleroma, and they send
forth outside the Pleroma its Common Fruit to be a spouse to Sophia
Without and the corrector of the passions which she suffered while
seeking after Christ.[125] Then the Fruit being outside the Pleroma and
finding her amid the first four passions (to wit) in fear and grief and
perplexity and supplication, corrected her passions, but did not think
it seemly in correcting them that they should be destroyed, since they
[Sidenote: p. 289.] were eternal and special to Sophia, nor yet that
Sophia should be among such passions as fear and grief, supplication
and perplexity. He, therefore, being so great an Aeon and the offspring
of the whole Pleroma, made the passions stand away from her and He made
them fundamental essences.[126] And He made the fear into the essence
of the soul,[127] and the grief into that of matter, and the perplexity
into (that) of demons, but the conversion and entreaty and supplication
He made a path to repentance and (the) power of the soul’s essence,
which (essence) is called the Right Hand or Demiurge from fear. This,
he says, is the Scripture saying: “The beginning of wisdom is fear of
the Lord.”[128] For it was the beginning of the passions of Sophia. For
she feared, then she grieved, then she was perplexed, and [Sidenote: p.
290.] then she took refuge in prayer and supplication. And the essence
of the soul, he says, is fiery and is called a (supercelestial) Place
and Hebdomad and Ancient of Days.[129] And whatever things they say
of him, he says, the same belong to the psychic one whom they declare
to be the Demiurge of the Cosmos; but he is fiery. And Moses also, he
says, spake, “The Lord thy God is a burning and consuming fire.”[130]
And truly he wishes this (text) to be thus written. But the power of
the fire, he says, is in some sort double; for it is an all-devouring
fire (and) cannot be quenched. And according to this, indeed, a part of
the soul is mortal, being a certain middle state; for it is a Hebdomad
and Laying to Rest. For below (the soul) is of the Ogdoad where is
Sophia, a day which has been given shape, and the Common Fruit of the
Pleroma; but above it is of Matter wherein is the Demiurge.[131] If
it makes itself completely like those who are on high in the Ogdoad,
it becomes immortal and comes to the Ogdoad, which is, he says, the
heavenly Jerusalem; but if it makes itself completely like matter, that
is to the material passions, it is corruptible and is destroyed.
33. As therefore the first and greatest power of the [Sidenote: p.
291.] psychic essence becomes an image [of the only-begotten Son, so
the power of the material essence] is the devil, the ruler of this
world, and (that) of the essence of demons, which is from perplexity,
is Beelzebud.[132] But it is Sophia on high who works from the Ogdoad
up to the Hebdomad. They say that the Demiurge knows absolutely
nothing, but is according to them mindless and foolish and knows not
what he does or works. And for him who knows not what he makes, Sophia
creates all things and strengthens them. And when she had wrought it,
he thought that he had by himself accomplished the creation of the
cosmos; wherefore he began to say: “I am God, and beside me there is
none other.”
34. The Tetractys of Valentinus is then at once:--
“A certain source containing roots of eternal nature.”
(Pyth., _Carm. Aur._, l. 48.)
and Sophia by whom the psychic and material creation is now framed.
And Sophia is called Spirit, but the [Sidenote: p. 292.] Demiurge
Soul, and the Devil the ruler of the world, and Beelzebud that of the
demons. This is what they say, and beside this, they make their whole
teaching arithmetical; [and] as is said above, they (imagine) that
(the) thirty Aeons within the Pleroma again projected other Aeons by
analogy with themselves, so that the Pleroma may be summed up in a
perfect number. For, as it has been made clear that the Pythagoreans
divide (the circle) into 12 and 30 and 60 (parts) and that these have
also minutes of minutes, thus also do (the Valentinians) subdivide
the things within the Pleroma. But subdivided also are the things in
the Ogdoad, and there rules[133] (there) Sophia who is according to
them the Mother of All Living, and the Logos, the Joint Fruit of the
Pleroma, (and) there are (there) supercelestial angels, citizens of
the Jerusalem on [Sidenote: p. 293.] high, which is in heaven. For
this Jerusalem is Sophia. Without and her bridegroom the Joint Fruit
of the Pleroma. (But) the Demiurge also projected souls; for he is the
essence of souls. This is according to them Abraham and these are the
children of Abraham. Then, from the material and devilish essence the
Demiurge has made the bodies of the souls. This is the saying: “And
God made man, taking dust from the earth, and breathed into his face a
breath of life, and man became a living soul.”[134] This is, according
to them, the inward psychic man who dwells in the material body which
is material, corruptible, and formed entirely of devilish essence.
But this material man is (according to them) like unto an inn, or the
dwelling-place, sometimes of the soul alone, sometimes of the soul and
demons, and sometimes of the soul and logoi, who are logoi sown from
above in this world by the Joint Fruit of the Pleroma, and by Sophia,
and who dwell in the earthly body with the soul when there are no
demons dwelling with it. [Sidenote: p. 294.] This, he says, is what
was written in Scripture: “For this cause I bow my knees to the God
and Father and Lord of our Lord Jesus Christ, that God would grant you
that Christ should dwell in the inner man, that is the psychical not
the somatic, that you be strengthened to comprehend what is the depth”
which is the Father of the universals “and what is the breadth,”[135]
which is Stauros the Limit of the Pleroma, “or what the length,” which
is the Pleroma of the Aeons. Wherefore, he says, the psychic man does
not receive the things of God’s spirit; for they are foolishness unto
him. But foolishness, he says, is the power of the Demiurge, for he was
senseless and mindless and thought that he fashioned the cosmos, being
ignorant that Sophia, the Mother, the Ogdoad, wrought all things with
regard to the creation of the world for him who knew it not.
35. All the prophets and the Law, then, spake from the (inspiration of
the) Demiurge, a foolish god,[136] he says, being themselves foolish
and knowing nothing. Wherefore, he says, the Saviour declared: “All
who came before me are thieves and robbers.”[137] The Apostle also:
“The mystery which was not known to the first generations.”[138] For
none [Sidenote: p. 295.] of the prophets, he says, declared anything
concerning the things of whereof we speak; for all (of them) were
ignored in what was said by the Demiurge alone.[139] When, therefore,
creation was brought to completion,[140] and the revelation of the
sons of God, that is of the Demiurge, at length became necessary,
which had before been concealed, he says, the psychic man was veiled
and had a veil upon his heart. Then when it was time that the veil
should be taken away, and that these mysteries should be seen, Jesus
was born through Mary the Virgin[141] according to the saying: “(The)
Holy Spirit shall come upon thee”--the Spirit is Sophia--“and a power
of the Highest shall overshadow thee”--the Highest is the Demiurge.
“Wherefore that which is born from thee shall be called holy.”[142]
For He was born not from the Highest alone, as those created after
the fashion of Adam were created from the Highest, that is from the
Demiurge. But Jesus was the new man (born) from the Holy Spirit (and
the Highest),[143] that is from Sophia and the Demiurge, so that the
Demiurge supplied the mould and constitution of His body, but the Holy
Spirit supplied [Sidenote: p. 296.] His substance,[144] and thus the
Heavenly Logos came into being, having been begotten from the Ogdoad
through Mary. Concerning this there is a great enquiry among them and a
source of schisms and variance. And hence their school[145] has become
divided and one part is called by them the Anatolic and the other the
Italiote. Those from Italy, whereof are Heracleon and Ptolemy, say that
the body of Jesus was born psychic, and therefore the Spirit descended
as a dove at the Baptism, that is the Word which is of the mother
Sophia on high and cried aloud to the psychic man[146] and raised him
from the dead. This, he says, is the saying: “He who raised Christ from
the dead, shall quicken your mortal bodies (and your psychic).”[147]
For earth, he says, has come under a curse. “For Earth,” he says, “thou
art, and to earth thou shalt return.”[148] But those from the East,
whereof are Axionicus and Bardesanes,[149] [Sidenote: p. 297.] say that
the body of the Saviour was spiritual. For (the) Holy Spirit came upon
Mary, that is Sophia and the Power of the Highest is the demiurgic
art,[150] so that that which was given by the Spirit to Mary might be
moulded (into form).
36. These things then let these men enquire after in their own way,
and if they should happen to do so in any other, so let it be. But
(Valentinus) also says that as the false steps among the Aeons had been
put straight[151] and also those in the Ogdoad or Sophia Without, so
also were those in the Hebdomad. For the Demiurge was taught by Sophia
that he is not the only God as he thought, and that beside him there
is none other; but he knew better after being taught by Sophia. For
he was schooled by her and was initiated and taught the great mystery
of the Father and the Aeons and told it to none. This, he says, is
what he spake to Moses: “I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac
and the God of Jacob, and my name I have not announced to them,”[152]
that is to say: “I have not told the mystery nor have I explained who
is God, but I have kept to myself the mystery which I have heard from
Sophia.” It was necessary, then, that the things on high having been
put straight, in the same sequence,[153] correction [Sidenote: p.
298.] should come to those here. For this cause was Jesus the Saviour
born through Mary, that He might put straight things here, as the
Christ, who on high was projected by Nous and Aletheia, put straight
the passions of Sophia Without, that is, of the Ectroma. And again the
Saviour who was born through Mary came to set straight the passions of
the soul. There are, then, according to them three Christs, the one
projected by Nous and Aletheia along with the Holy Spirit; and the
Joint Fruit of the Pleroma the equal yoke-fellow[154] of Sophia Without
who is called and is herself a Holy Spirit (but) inferior to the first;
and third, He who was born through Mary for the restoration[155] of
this creation of ours.
37. I consider I have now by means of many (explanations) sufficiently
sketched the heresy of Valentinus, it being a Pythagorean one; and it
seems to me that the refutation of these doctrines by exposition should
stop. Plato, moreover, when setting forth mysteries concerning the
universe writes to Dionysius in some such way as this:[156]
“I must speak to you in enigmas, so that if the tablet [Sidenote: p.
299.] should suffer in any of its leaves on sea or land, whoso reads
may not understand.[157] For things are thus. As regards the king of
all, all things are his, and all are for his sake, and he is the cause
of all that is fair. A second (cause exists) concerning secondary
things and a third concerning those things which come third.[158]
But respecting the king himself there is nothing of this kind of
which I have spoken. But after this the soul seeks to learn of what
quality these are, since it looks towards the things which are germane
to itself, of which it has nought sufficiently. This is, O son of
Dionysius and Doris, your question as to what is the cause of all
evils. But it is rather that anxiety about this is inborn, and if one
does not remove it, one will never hit upon the truth.[159] But what
is wonderful about it, hear. For there are men who have heard these
things, able to learn and able to remember,[160] and who have yet grown
old while straining to form a complete judgment. They say that what
(once) appeared believable is now unbelievable, and that what was then
unbelievable was then the opposite. Looking therefore to [Sidenote:
p. 300.] this, beware, lest you repent what has unworthily fallen
from you. Wherefore I have written none of these things, nor is there
anything (upon them) signed Plato, nor will there ever be. But the
sayings now attributed to Socrates were (said by him)[161] when he was
young and fair.”[162]
(Now) Valentinus having chanced upon these (lines) conceived the king
of all, of whom Plato spoke, to be Father and Bythos and the primal
source of all the Aeons.[163] And when Plato spoke of the second
(cause) concerning secondary things, Valentinus assumed that the
secondary things were all the Aeons being within the limit of the
Pleroma and the third (cause) concerning the third things, he assumed
to be the whole arrangement without the limit and (outside) the
Pleroma. And this Valentinus made plain in the fewest words in a psalm,
beginning from below and not as Plato did from above, in these words:--
[Sidenote: p. 301.] “I behold all things hanging from air,
I perceive all things upheld by spirit,
Flesh hanging from soul,
Soul standing forth from air,
And air hanging from aether,
But fruits borne away from Bythos
But the embryo from the womb.”[164]
Understanding this thus:--Flesh is, according to them, Matter, which
depends from the soul of the Demiurge. But soul stands out from air,
that is the Demiurge from the Spirit outside the Pleroma. But air
stands out from æther, that is Sophia Without from that which is
within (the) limit and the whole Pleroma. Fruits are borne away from
Bythos, which is the whole emanation of Aeons coming into being from
the Father. The opinions of Valentinus have therefore been sufficiently
told.[165] It remains to tell of the teachings of those who have been
obedient to his school, another having different teaching.
3. _About Secundus and Epiphanes._[166]
[Sidenote: p. 302.] 38. A certain Secundus, who was born at the same
time as Ptolemy, says that there exist a right hand and a left hand
tetrad like light and darkness. And he says that the Power which fell
away and is lacking[167] came into being not from the thirty Aeons,
but from their fruits. But there is a certain Epiphanes, a teacher
of theirs, who says: “The First Principle[168] was incomprehensible,
ineffable and unnameable” which he calls Solitude[169] and that a Power
of this co-exists with it which he names Oneness.[170] The same Monotes
and Henotes preceded [but] did not send forth[171] an unbegotten and
invisible principle over all which he calls[172] a Monad. “With this
Power co-exists a power of the same essence with itself, which same
power I also name the One.” These four Powers themselves sent forth the
remaining projections of the Aeons. But others of them [Sidenote: p.
303.] again have called the first and primordial Ogdoad by these names:
first, “Before the Beginning,” then “Inconceivable,” third “Ineffable”
and the fourth, “Invisible;”[173] and (they say) that from the first
Proarche was projected in the first and fifth place Beginning;
from Anennoetos, in the second and sixth (place) Unrevealed, from
Arrheton in the third and seventh place, Unnameable and from Aoratos,
Unbegotten.[174] (This is the) Pleroma of the first Ogdoad. And they
will have these powers to have existed before Bythos and Sige. But yet
others understand differently about Bythos himself, some saying that he
is spouseless and neither male nor female, and others that Sige exists
beside him as his female and that this is the first syzygy.
4. _About Ptolemy._[175]
[Sidenote: p. 304.] 39. But the adherents of Ptolemy say
that he [Bythos] has two partners whom they call also (his)
predispositions[176] (_i. e._) Thought and Will. For he first had it
in mind to project something, and then he willed (to do so). Wherefore
from these two diatheses and powers, that is, from Ennoia and Thelesis
as it were blending with one another, the projection of Monogenes and
Aletheia as a pair came to pass. The which types and images of the two
diatheses of the Father came forth visible from the invisible, Nous
from Thelema[177] and Aletheia from Ennoia. Therefore also the male
image was born from the later-begotten Thelema, but the female from the
unbegotten Ennoia, because Thelema came into being like a power from
Ennoia. For Ennoia has ever in mind projection, but she is not able by
herself to project what she has in mind. But when the power of Thelema
[came into being later],[178] then she projected what she had in mind.
5. _About Marcus._[179]
40. And a certain other teacher of theirs, Marcus, an [Sidenote: p.
305.] expert in magic, depending now on trickery and now on demons,
leads astray many. For he says that there is in him the greatest power
from the invisible and unnameable places. And often he takes a cup,
as if consecrating it,[180] and prolonging the words of consecration,
causes the mixture to appear purple and sometimes red, so as to make
his dupes think that a certain grace has come down, and has given a
blood-like power[181] to the draught. But the rogue, though he formerly
escaped the notice of many, will, now that he has been refuted,[182]
have to stop. For he used secretly to insert a certain drug having the
power of giving such a colour to the mixture, and then to wait while
uttering much gibberish, until it dissolved by absorbing moisture and,
mixing with the draught, coloured it. And the drugs which can thus give
colour we have before described in our book against the Magicians,[183]
and have set forth how leading many astray, they utterly ruin them.
Which (last), if they care to consider more carefully what has been
said above, will know the fraud of Marcus.
[Sidenote: p. 306.] 41. Which (Marcus) also, mixing a cup by another
hand, (sometimes) gives it[184] to a woman to consecrate, while he
stands by her side holding a larger one empty: and when the dupe has
made the consecration, he takes (the cup) from her, and empties it into
the larger one and many times pouring (the contents) from one cup to
the other, says these words over them: “May the Incomprehensible and
Ineffable Charis who is earlier than the universals fill thy inner
man, and make abundant in thee the knowledge[185] of her, even as she
scatters the mustard seed upon the good ground!” And as he speaks
some such words over it, and (thereby) distracts the dupe and the
bystanders, so that he is considered a miracle-worker, he fills the
larger cup from the smaller so that it overflows. And we have set forth
the trick of this in the above-named book, where we have pointed out
many drugs which have the power of causing increase when thus mixed
with watery substances,[186] especially when mingled with wine: the
drug compounded beforehand, being hidden in the empty cup in such a
way that this may be exhibited as containing nothing, and being poured
backwards and forwards from one cup to the other, so as to dissolve the
drug by mixture with the water,[187] and so that [Sidenote: p. 307.]
when it is inflated by air, an overflow of the water comes about, and
it increases the more it is shaken, since such is the nature of the
drug. If, however, one lays aside the cup when filled, the mixture
will before long return to its former volume, the power of the drug
being quenched by the continued moisture. Wherefore he hurriedly gives
the bystanders to drink; and they being at the same time scared and
thirsting for it as something divine and mingled by a god, hasten to
drink.
42. Such like and other things, the deceiver undertakes to do. Whence
he was glorified by those he duped and was thought sometimes to
prophesy himself and sometimes to make others do so, either effecting
this by demons or by trickery as we have said above. Further he utterly
ruined many,[188] and led on many of them to become his disciples (by)
teaching them to be indifferent to sin[189] as free from danger (to
them) through their belonging to the Perfect Power and partakers of
the Inconceivable Authority. To whom also after baptism they promise
another which they call Redemption,[190] and thereby turn again to
evil those [Sidenote: p. 308.] who remain with them in the hope of
deliverance, (as if) those who had been once baptized might again
meet with acquittal. Through such jugglery,[191] they seem to retain
their hearers, whom, when they consider that they have been (duly)
indoctrinated and are able to keep fast the things entrusted to them,
they then lead to this (second baptism), not contenting themselves with
this alone, but promising them still something else, for the purpose
of keeping control over them by hope, lest they should separate from
them. For they mutter something in an inaudible voice, laying hands
on them for the receiving of Redemption which they pretend cannot be
spoken openly unless one were highly instructed, or when the bishop
should come to speak it into the ears of one departing this life.[192]
And this jugglery is practised so that they may remain the bishop’s
disciples, eagerly desirous to learn what has been said about the last
thing[193] whereby the learner would become perfect. Of which things I
have kept silence for this cause, lest any should think I put the worst
construction on them. For this is not what we have set before us, but
rather the exposure of whence they have derived the hints[194] from
which their doctrines have arisen.
43. For the blessed elder Irenæus having come forward [Sidenote: p.
309.] very openly for (their) refutation has set forth these baptisms
and redemptions saying in rounder terms what those who traffic[195]
with them do; and if some of these deny that they have thus received
them (it is because) they learn to always deny.[196] Wherefore we have
been careful to enquire very sedulously and to find out minutely what
they hand down in the first baptism as they call it, and what in the
second which they call Redemption: and no unutterable doing of theirs
has escaped us. But let us abandon[197] these things to Valentinus
and his school. Marcus, however, imitating his teacher himself also
concocts a vision, thinking thus to glorify himself. For Valentinus
claims that he himself saw a new-born infant, hearing whom he enquired
who he might be. And (the infant) answered declaring himself to be
the Logos. Thereupon (Valentinus) having added a certain tragic myth,
wishes from this to construct the heresy which he had already taken in
hand.[198] With like audacity, Marcus declares that the Tetrad came
before him in feminine shape; because, he says, the cosmos could not
bear its male form.[199] And [Sidenote: p. 310.] she disclosed to him
what she was, and the coming into being of all things, which she had
never yet revealed to any either of gods or men (but) announced it to
him alone, saying thus:--when the First (Being) who has no father,[200]
the Inconceivable and Substanceless One, who is neither male nor
female, willed the ineffable to be spoken and the invisible to take
shape, He opened His mouth and a Logos like unto Him went forth. Who,
standing beside Him, showed Him what He was, Himself having appeared in
the shape of the Invisible One. And the utterance of the name was on
this wise. He spoke the first word of the name which was the beginning
and was the syllable[201] of four letters. And He added to it the
second, and it also was of four letters. And He spoke the third, which
was of ten letters and then the fourth, and this was of twelve. There
came to pass therefore, the pronunciation of the whole name of thirty
letters, but of four syllables. But each of the elements has its own
letters[202] and its own character,[203] and its own pronunciation
and figures and images, nor is there any of them which perceives the
form of another. [Sidenote: p. 311.] Nor does it see that it is an
element, nor know the pronunciation of its neighbour; but each sounds
as if pronouncing the whole, and believes itself to be naming the
[universe].[204] For while each of them is a part of the universe, it
thinks its own sound names as it were the whole, and does not cease to
sound until it has arrived at the last single-tongued letter of the
last element. Then he says that the return of the universals (to the
Deity)[205] will come to pass when all things coming together into one
letter shall echo one and the same sound. He supposes that the likeness
of this sound is the Amen[206] which we speak in unison. But (he says)
that the vowels[207] exist to give shape to the substanceless and
unbegotten Aeon, and that they are those forms which the Lord called
angels, which behold without ceasing the Father’s face.[208]
44. But the names of the elements which are common (to all) and may be
spoken, he calls Aeons and Logoi and Roots and Seeds[209] and Pleromas
and Fruits. And (he says) [Sidenote: p. 312.] that every one of them
and what is special to each is to be comprehended as comprised in the
name of Ecclesia. Of which elements, he says, that the last letter of
the last element first sent forth[210] its own sound, the echo of which
going forth begot its own elements as being the images of the other
elements. Wherefrom, he says, both the things here below were set in
order and those which were before them were brought into being.[211]
He says nevertheless that the very letter the sound of which followed
immediately upon the echo below was taken up again by its own syllable
in order to fill full again the universe, but that the echo remained
in the things below as if cast outside it.[212] But the element itself
wherefrom the letter with its pronunciation came down below, he says,
is of thirty letters, and every one of the thirty letters contains
within itself other letters whereby the name of the letter is named.
And again others are named by other letters and yet others by these
others, so that the total comes out to infinity, if the letters be
written separately.[213] You will more clearly [Sidenote: p. 313.]
understand what has been said (if it be put) thus:--The element Delta
contains in itself five letters, the Delta, the Epsilon, the Lambda,
the Tau and the Alpha and the same letters (are written) by other
letters [214]. If then the whole substance[215] of the Delta comes
out to infinity, letters constantly giving birth to other letters and
succeeding one another, how much greater than that one element is the
sea of letters? And if the one letter be thus infinite, behold the
depth[216] of the letters of the whole name whereof the industry or
rather the idiot labour[217] of Marcus will have the Forefather to be
composed. Wherefore, (he says) the Father, knowing well His unconfined
nature, gave to the elements which He calls Aeons, the power for each
to send forth the pronunciation of his own name, whereby none is
capable of pronouncing the whole.
45. And [it is said that] the Tetrad having explained these things to
him, said:--“I desire now to show to thee Aletheia[218] herself; for
I have brought her down from the dwellings on high in order that thou
mayest behold her [Sidenote: p. 314.] unclothed and learn her beauty,
and may also hear her speak and admire her wisdom. See then the head
on high the first Alpha-Omega, and the neck Beta-Psi, the shoulders
(together with the hands) Gamma-Chi, the breast Delta-Phi, the waist
Epsilon-Upsilon, the belly Zeta-Tau, the privy parts Eta-Sigma, the
thighs Theta-Rho, the knees Iota-Pi, the legs Kappa-Omicron, the ankles
Lambda-Xi, the feet Mu-Nu.” Such is the body of Aletheia according
to Marcus, this the form of the element, this the impress of the
letter. And he calls this element Anthropos[219] and says that it
is the fountain of all speech and the principle of every sound, and
the utterance of everything ineffable, and the mouth of the silent
Sige.[220] “And this is her body. But do thou raising on high the
understanding of the intelligence,[221] hear the Self-Begotten and
Forefather Word from the lips of Truth.”
46. When (the Tetrad) had thus spoken (says Marcus), Aletheia looking
upon him and opening her mouth spake a word. But that word was a name
and the name was that which we know and speak (to wit) Christ Jesus,
having [Sidenote: p. 315.] spoken which, she straightway became silent.
And when Marcus expected her to say something more, the Tetrad again
coming forward said: “Holdest thou simple the word which thou hast
heard from the lips of Aletheia? Yet that which you know and seem to
have possessed of old is not the name. For you have its sound only,
and know not its power. For Jesus is an illustrious name having six
letters[222] invoked by all the Elect. But that which occurs among the
(five)[223] Aeons of the Pleroma has many parts (and) is of another
shape and of a different type, being known by those of (His) kindred
whose magnitudes[224] are ever with Him.”
47. “Know ye that the twenty-four letters among you are emanations
in the likeness of the Three Powers encompassing the universe[225]
and (the) number of the elements on [Sidenote: p. 316.] high. For
suppose that the nine mute letters[226] are those of the Father and of
Aletheia, because they are mute, that is, ineffable and unutterable;
and the semi-mute which are eight,[227] those of Logos and Zoe,
because they exist as it were half-way between the mute and those
which sound,[228] and they receive the emanation from those above
them and the ascension of those below; and the vowels--and they are
seven[229]--are those of Anthropos and Ecclesia, since it is the sound
going forth from Anthropos which has given form to the universals. For
the echo of the sound has clothed them with shape.[230] There are then
Logos and Zoe having the 8 and Anthropos and Ecclesia the 7 and the
Father and Aletheia the 9. But since the reckoning was deficient,[231]
He who was seated in the Father came down, having been sent forth from
that wherefrom he had been separated for the rectification of the
things which had been done, so that the unity of the Pleromas which is
in the Good One might bear as fruit one power which is in all from all.
And thus the 7 recovered the power of the 8, [Sidenote: p. 317.] and
the three places became alike in numbers, being three ogdoads. Which
three added together show forth the number of 24.” In fact the three
elements (which he says exist in the syzygy of the three powers, which
are 6, the flowing-forth of which are the 24 elements) having been
quadrupled by the Word of the Ineffable Tetrad make the same number
for themselves which he says is (that) of the Unnameable One. But they
were clothed by the 6 powers in the likeness of the Invisible One, of
the images of which elements the double letters are the likeness, which
added to the 24 elements by analogy make potentially the number 30.[232]
48. He says that the fruit of this reckoning and arrangement[233]
appeared[234] in semblance of an image (to wit) He who after the six
days went up to the mountain[235] as one of four [Sidenote: p. 318.]
persons and became one of six. Who came down and bore rule in the
Hebdomad, Himself becoming the illustrious[236] Ogdoad and containing
within Himself the whole number of the elements. Which the descent
of the dove coming upon Him at the baptism made plain, which (dove)
is Alpha and Omega, the number being plainly 801.[237] And because
of this Moses said that man came into being on the 6th day. But
according to the economy of the Passion on the 6th day, which is the
Preparation,[238] the last man appeared for the regeneration of the
First Man. Of this economy, the beginning and the end was the 6th
hour, wherein he was nailed to the Cross. For, (he says) that the
perfect Nous, knowing that number 6 possesses the power of creation and
regeneration[239] made apparent to the Sons of Light the regeneration
which had come through Him who appeared as Episemon. For the
illustrious number[240] when blended with the other elements completes
the 30-lettered name.
[Sidenote: p. 319.] 49. But He has made use as His instrument of
the greatness of the 7 numbers, in order that the Fruit of the
self-inspired (Council)[241] might be made manifest. Consider, he says,
this Episemon here present, which has taken shape from the Illustrious
One who has been, as it were, cut into parts and remains without. Who,
by His own power and forethought, by means of His own projection which
is that of the Seven Powers, imitated the Seventh Power and gave life
to the cosmos[242] and set it to be the soul of this visible universe.
He therefore uses this same work also as if it came into being by
Him independently; but the rest being imitations of that which is
inimitable minister to the Enthymesis[243] of the Mother. And the first
heaven sounds the Alpha, and that following it the Epsilon, and the 3rd
the Eta, and the 4th and middle one of the 7 the power of the Iota,
and the 5th the Omicron, and the 6th the Upsilon, [Sidenote: p. 320.]
and the 7th the Omega. And all the heavens when locked together into
one, give forth a sound and glorify Him by whom they were projected.
And the glory of the sounding is sent on high into the presence of the
Forefather[244]. And, he says, that the echo of this glorifying being
borne to the earth becomes the Fashioner and begetter of those upon the
earth. And there is a proof of this in the case of newly born children,
whose breath immediately they come forth from the womb, cries aloud
likewise the sound of each one of these elements. As then the Seven
Powers, he says, glorify the Word, so does the complaining soul among
infants. Wherefore, he says, David declared:--“Out of the mouth of
babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise.”[245] And again:--“The
heavens declare the glory of God.”[246] When also the soul is in pain
it cries aloud nothing else than the Omega in which it is grieved, so
that the soul on high recognizing its kindred may send it help.
[Sidenote: p. 321.] 50. And so far as to this.[247] But concerning the
beginning of the 24 elements, she speaks thus:--Henotes existed along
with Monotes[248] from which (two) came into being two projections:
Monad and the One which, as twice 2, became four. For twice 2 is 4. And
again the 2 and the 4 being added together the number 6 is manifested,
but when these 6 are quadrupled, 24. And these names of the first
Tetrad are understood to be the holiest of holy things, and cannot be
spoken, but are known by the Son alone. The Father knows also what
they are. Those named by Him in silence and faith are: Arrhetos[249]
and Sige, Pater and Aletheia. And the total number of this Tetrad is
24 elements. For Arrhetos has 7 elements, Sige 5[250] and Pater 5 and
Aletheia[251] 7. In like manner also the second Tetrad, Logos and Zoe,
Anthropos and Ecclesia, show forth the same number of elements. And the
spoken [Sidenote: p. 322.] name of the Saviour, that is Jesus, consists
of 6 letters; but His unspoken (name)[252] from the number of letters
taken one by one, is of 24 elements, but Christ (the) Son of 12.[253]
But the unspoken (element) in the Chreistos is of 30 letters and is
that of the letters in it, counting the elements one by one. For the
[name] Chreistos is of 8 elements: ([254] for the Chi[255] is of 3, and
the Rho of 2, and the Ei of 2 and the Iota of 4, the Sigma of 5 and the
Tau of 3, while the Ou is of 2 and the San of 3). Thus they imagine
that the unspoken element in “Chreistos” is of 30 elements. Wherefore
also, say they, He said “I am Alpha and Omega,” thereby indicating that
the Dove has this number, which is eight hundred and one.[256]
51. But Jesus has this ineffable generation.[257] For from the
Mother of the Universals the first Tetrad came forth, as if it were
a daughter, and the second Tetrad and an Ogdoad thus came into
being, wherefrom the Decad [Sidenote: p. 323.] proceeded. Thus an
Eighteen[258] came into being. Then the Decad having united with the
Ogdoad and making it tenfold, [the number] 80 [proceeded; and the
80][259] being again multiplied by 10, gives birth to the number 800.
So that the total number coming forth from the Ogdoad to the Decad is
8 and 80 and 800, which is Jesus. For the name Jesus according to the
number in the letters is 888. And the Greek Alphabet has eight monads
and eight decads and eight hecatontads indicating the cipher of the
eight hundreds as 88, that is the (word) Jesus (made up) from all the
constituent numbers. Wherefore also He is named Alpha and Omega as
signifying the birth from them all.
52. But concerning His fashioning[260] (Marcus) speaks thus: Powers
which emanated from the Second Tetrad [Sidenote: p. 324.] fashioned
the Jesus who appeared upon earth, and the angel Gabriel filled the
place[261] of the Logos and the Holy Spirit that of Zoe, and the
power of the Highest[262] (that) of Anthropos and the Virgin that of
Ecclesia. Thus by incarnation[263] a man was generated by Himself
through Mary. But when He came to the water, there descended upon
Him as a dove he who had ascended on high and had filled the 12th
number,[264] in whom existed the seed of those who had been sown
together[265] in Him, and had descended together and had ascended
together. But this Power which descended on Him, he says, was the seed
of the Pleroma having within it the Father and the Son, which through
them was known to be the unnamed power of Sige, and (to be) all the
Aeons. And that this was the Spirit which in Him spake through the
mouth of the Son, confessed Himself to be Son of Man, and manifested
the Father, yet veritably descended into Jesus (and) became one with
Him. The Saviour from the Economy,[266] destroyed death, they say,
but Christ Jesus made known the [Sidenote: p. 325.] Father. He says
therefore that Jesus was the name of the man from the Economy, but that
it was set forth in resemblance and shape of the Anthropos who was to
come upon Him; and that when He had received he retained the Anthropos
himself and the Father himself and Arrhetos and Sige and Aletheia and
Ecclesia and Zoe.[267]
53. I hope then that these things are clearly to all of sane mind
without authority and far from that knowledge which is according to
religion, being (in fact) fragments of astrological inventions and of
the arithmetical art of the Pythagoreans, as you who love learning
will also know from those their doctrines which we have exposed in the
foregoing books. But in order that we may exhibit them more clearly to
the disciples, not of Christ, but, of Pythagoras, I will also set forth
so far as can be done in epitome, the things which they have taken from
(this last) concerning the phenomena of the stars. For they say that
these universals are composed from a monad and a dyad, [Sidenote: p.
326.] and counting from a monad up to four, they bring into being a
decad. And the dyad[268] again going forth up to Episemon, for example,
two and four and six show forth the dodecad. And, again, if we count
in the same way from the dyad up to the decad, the triacontad appears,
wherein are the ogdoad and decad and dodecad. Then they say that the
dodecad through its containing the Episemon and because the Episemon
closely follows it, is Passion.[269] And since through this, the lapse
with regard to the 12th number occurred, the sheep skipped away and was
lost.[270] And in like manner from the decad: and on this they tell of
the drachma which the woman lost and lamp in hand searched for and of
the loss of the one sheep;[271] and having contrasted with this the
(number) 99, they make a fable for themselves of the numbers, since of
the 11 multiplied by 9 they make the number 99, and thanks to this they
say that the Amen contains this number.[272]
[Sidenote: p. 327.] And of another number they say this:--the element
Eta with the Episemon is an ogdoad, as it lies in the 8th place from
the Alpha. Then again counting the numbers of the same elements
together without the Episemon and adding them together as far as the
Eta, they display the number 30. For if one begins the number of the
elements with the Alpha (and continues) up to the Eta (inclusive) after
subtracting the Episemon, one finds the number 30.[273] Since then the
number 30 is made from the uniting of the three powers, the same number
30 occurring thrice made 90--for three times 30 are 90 [and the same
triad multiplied into itself brought forth 9]. Thus the ogdoad made
the number 99 from the first ogdoad and decad and dodecad. The number
of which (ogdoad) they sometimes carry to completion[274] and make a
triacontad and sometimes deducting the 12th number they count it 11 and
likewise make the 10th (number) 9. And multiplying and decupling[275]
[Sidenote: p. 328.] these (figures) they complete the number 99. And
since the 12th Aeon left the 11 [on high] and fell away from them and
came below, they imagine that these things correspond one to the other.
For the type of the letters is instructive. For the 11th letter is
the Lambda which is the number 30 and is so placed after the likeness
of the arrangement on high,[276] since from the Alpha apart from the
Episemon, the number of the same letters up to Lambda when added
together makes up the number 99.[277] But (they say) that the Lambda
which is put in the 11th place[278] came down to seek for what is like
unto it so that it may complete the 12th number, and having found it
did (so) complete it is plain from the very shape of the element.[279]
For the Lambda succeeding as it were in the search for what was like
unto itself and finding, seized it, and filled up with it the place of
the 12th element Mu, which is composed of two Lambdas.[280] Wherefore
they avoid by this gnosis the place [Sidenote: p. 329.] of the 99 that
is to say the Hysterema[281] as the type of the left hand, but follow
the One which added to the 99, brings them over to the right hand.
54.[282] But they declare that first the four elements which they say
are fire, water, earth (and) air, were made through the Mother and
projected as an image of the Tetrad on high. And reckoning in with
them their energies, such as heat, cold, moisture, and dryness they
exactly reflect the Ogdoad. Next, they enumerate ten powers, thus:
Seven circular bodies which they also call heavens, then a circle
encompassing these which they call the Eighth Heaven and besides these,
the Sun and Moon.[283] And these making up the number 10, they declare
to be the image of the invisible decad which is from Logos and Zoe.
And (they say) that the dodecad is revealed through the circle called
the Zodiac. For they declare that the twelve most evident signs shadow
forth the dodecad which is the daughter of Anthropos and [Sidenote: p.
330.] Ecclesia. And since they say the highest heaven has been linked
to the ascension of the universals, the swiftest in existence, which
(heaven) weighs down upon the sphere itself, and counterbalances by
its own weight the swiftness of the others, so that in thirty years
it completes the cycle from sign to sign--this they declare to be the
image of Horos encircling their thirty-named Mother.[284]
Again the Moon traversing the heavens completely in 30 days, typifies
(they say) by these days the number of the Aeons. And the Sun
completing his journey and terminating his cyclical return to his
former place in 12 months shows forth the Dodecad. And that the days
themselves, since they are measured by 12 hours, are a type of the
mighty[285] Ogdoad. And also that the perimeter of the Zodiacal circle
has 360 degrees and that each Zodiacal sign has 30. Thus by means of
the circle, they say, the [Sidenote: p. 331.] image of the connection
of the 12 with the 30 is observed. And again also they imagine that
the earth is divided into 12 climates, and that each several climate
receives a single power from the heavens immediately above it[286] and
produces children of the same essence with the power sending down [this
influence] by emanation [which is they say] a type of the Dodecad on
high.
55. And besides this, they say that the Demiurge of the Ogdoad on
high,[287] wishing to imitate the Boundless and Everlasting and
Unconfined and Timeless One and not being able to form a model of His
stability and permanence, because he was himself the fruit of the
Hysterema, was forced to place in it for rendering it eternal, times
and seasons and numbers, thinking that by the multitude of times he was
imitating the Boundless One. But they declare that in this the truth
having escaped him, he followed the false; and that therefore when the
times are fulfilled, his work will be dissolved.[288]
[Sidenote: p. 332.] 56. These things, then, those who are from the
school of Valentinus declare concerning Creation and the Universe,
every time producing something newer[289] (than the last). And they
consider this to be fructification, if any one similarly discovering
something greater appears to work wonders. And finding in each case
from the Scriptures something accordant with the aforesaid numbers,
they prate of Moses and the Prophets, imagining them to declare
allegorically the dimensions of the Aeons. Which things it does not
seem to me expedient to explain as they are senseless and inconsistent,
and already the blessed elder Irenæus has marvellously and painfully
refuted their doctrines. From whom also [we have taken] their so-called
discoveries and have shown that they, having appropriated these
things from (the) trifling[290] of the Pythagorean philosophy and the
astrologies, accuse Christ of having handed them down. But since I
consider that their senseless doctrines have been sufficiently set
forth, and that it has been already proved whose disciples Marcus and
Colarbasus[291] by becoming the successors of the school of Valentinus
(really) are, let us see also what Basilides says.[292]
FOOTNOTES
[Footnote 1: He of course refers to the Ophites, whence it is clear
that he included Justinus among them. His language may imply that all
these serpent-worshipping sects had been in existence some time before,
but did not begin to write their doctrines until they had taken on a
veneer of Christianity. This is very probable, but there is not as yet
any convincing proof that this was the case.]
[Footnote 2: Here again it is very difficult to say whether τῶν
ἀκολούθων means those who follow in point of time or in the pages of
the book.]
[Footnote 3: ὄργια, “secret rites” and ὀργή, “wrath,” is the pun here.]
[Footnote 4: Simon Magus, the convert of Philip the Evangelist, is
said by all patristic writers to be at once the first teacher and the
founder of all (post-Christian) Gnosticism; but until the discovery
of our text our knowledge of his doctrines hardly went further than
the statements of St. Irenæus and Epiphanius that he claimed to be the
Supreme Being. The only other light on the subject came from Theodoret,
who, writing in the fifth century, discloses in a few brief words the
assertion by Simon of a system of aeons or inferior powers emanating
from the Divinity by pairs. It is plain that in this, Theodoret must
have either borrowed from, or used the same material as, our author,
and it is now seen that Simon’s aeons were said by him to be six in
number, the sources of all subsequent being, and to be considered under
a double aspect. On the one hand, they were names or attributes of God
like the Amshaspands of Zoroastrianism or the Sephiroth of the Jewish
Cabala; and on the other they were identified with natural objects such
as Heaven and Earth, Sun and Moon, Earth and Water, thereby forming a
link with the Orphic and other cosmogonies current in Greece and the
East. We now learn, too, for the first time that Simon taught, like the
Ophites, that the Supreme Being was of both sexes like his antitypes,
that the universe consisted of three worlds reflecting one another,
and that man must achieve his salvation by coming to resemble the
Deity--a result which was apparently to be brought about by finding
his twin soul and uniting himself to her. None of these ideas seem
to have been Simon’s own invention, and all are found among those of
earlier or later Gnostics. Hence their appearance has here given rise
to the theories, put forward in the first instance by German writers,
but also adopted by some English ones, that the Simon of our text was
not the magician of the _Acts_ but an heresiarch of the same name who
flourished in the second century, and that the opponent of St. Peter
covers under the same name the personality of St. Paul. Neither theory
seems to have any foundation.]
[Footnote 5: τοῦ Γιττηνοῦ. Hippolytus’ usual practice is to use the
place-name as an adjective. The Codex has Γειττηνοῦ, Justin Martyr, “of
Gitto.”]
[Footnote 6: Probably Paramedes or Agamedes is intended. Cf.
Theocritus, _Idyll_, II, 14. The Paramedes or Perimedes there mentioned
was said to have been a famous witch, child of the Sun, and mistress of
Poseidôn.]
[Footnote 7: Acts viii. 9-14.]
[Footnote 8: _i.e._ Cyrene.]
[Footnote 9: This story in one form or another appears in Maximus
Tyrius (_Diss._ xxxv), Ælian (_Hist._, xiv. 30), Justin (xxi. 4), and
Pliny (_Nat. Hist._, viii. 16). The name seems to be Psapho.]
[Footnote 10: Cruice’s emendation. Schneidewin, Miller, and Macmahon
read τάχιον ἀνθρώπῳ γενομένῳ, ὄντως θεῷ, “sooner than to Him who though
made man, was really God;” but there seems no question here of the
Second Person of the Trinity.]
[Footnote 11: γέννημα γυναικός, “birth of a woman.”]
[Footnote 12: This is the evident meaning of the sentence. Hippolytus
ignores all rules as to the order of his words. Macmahon translates as
if Christ were meant.]
[Footnote 13: Deut. iv. 24, “consuming” only in A. V.]
[Footnote 14: Empedocles also. See Vol. I. pp. 40-41 _supra_.]
[Footnote 15: τὸ γράμμα ἀποφάσεως, _liber revelationis_, Cr., “the
treatise of a revelation,” Macmahon; as if it were the title of a book.
But the title of the book attributed to Simon is given later as Ἡ
ἀποφάσις μεγάλη, and there seems no reason why the second syzygy of the
series should be singled out in it for special mention.]
[Footnote 16: A phrase singularly like this occurs in the “Naassene”
author. See Vol. I. pp. 140-141 _supra_, where the “universals” are
enumerated.]
[Footnote 17: Or that which can only be perceived by the mind and that
which can be perceived by the senses.]
[Footnote 18: ἐπινοήσῃ. The sense of the passage seems to require
“perceive”; but the Greek can only mean “have in one’s mind.” Probably
some blunder of the copyist.]
[Footnote 19: Here, again, he has inverted the order. The hidden is the
intelligible, the manifest, the perceptible.]
[Footnote 20: The simile of the Treasure-house finds frequent
expression in the _Pistis Sophia_.]
[Footnote 21: Dan. iv. 12.]
[Footnote 22: ἐξεικονισθῇ. Macmahon translates “if it be fully grown”
on the strength apparently of a passage in the LXX; but the word is
used too frequently throughout this chapter to have that meaning here.]
[Footnote 23: Isa. v. 7. The A.V. has “the men” for “a man” and
“pleasant” for “beloved.”]
[Footnote 24: τοῖς ἐξεικονισμένοις.]
[Footnote 25: 1 Pet. i. 24, 25. The A.V. has “glory of man” for “glory
of flesh.”]
[Footnote 26: τέλειον νοερὸν. It is very difficult to find in English a
word expressing the difference between this νοερός, “intellectual,” and
νοητός, “intelligible.”]
[Footnote 27: Reading ἀπειράκις ἀπείρων (ὄντων) for the ἀπειράκις
ἀπείρως of Cruice’s text.]
[Footnote 28: Cruice’s emendation. The Codex has γνώμην ἴσην, “equal
opinion”? Schneidewin, νώματος αἶσαν.]
[Footnote 29: Here we have Simon’s cosmogonical ideas set out for the
first time in something like his own words. He seems to postulate the
existence of a Logos who makes the Six Powers or Roots and who is
himself present in them all. This does not appear to differ from the
view of Philo, for which see _Forerunners_, I, 174, or Schürer’s _Hist.
of the Jewish People_ there quoted.]
[Footnote 30: Νοῦς καὶ Ἐπίνοιαν, Φωνὴ καὶ Ὄνομα, Λογισμὸς καὶ
Ἐνθύμησις. The last name is the only one that presents any difficulty,
although every heresiologist but Hippolytus gives the female of the
first syzygy as Ἔννοια. Ἐνθύμησις is translated _Conceptio_ by Cruice,
“Reflection” by Macmahon. It seems as if it here meant “desire” in a
mental, not a fleshly, sense; but as this word has a double meaning in
English, I have substituted for it “Passion.” Hereafter the Greek names
will be used.]
[Footnote 31: This daring idea that the Logos, the chief intermediary
between God and matter in whom all the lesser λόγοι and powers were
contained, as Philo thought, must himself either return to and be
united to God or else be lost in matter and perish, is met with in one
form or another in nearly all later forms of Gnosticism. It is this
which makes the redemption of Sophia after her “fall” so prominent
in the mythology of Valentinus, while its converse is shown in the
First Man of Manichæism conquered by Satan and groaning in chains
and darkness until released by the heavenly powers and placed in
some intermediate world to wait until the last spark of the light
which he has lost is redeemed from matter. It seems to be the natural
consequence of Philo’s ideas, for which see Schürer’s _Hist. of the
Jewish People_ (Eng. ed.) II, ii. pp. 370-376. Whether these did not
in turn owe something to Greek stories of mortals like Heracles and
Dionysos deified as a reward for their sufferings is open to question.
Cf. _Forerunners_, vol. I.]
[Footnote 32: Justinus also used this quotation from Isaiah i. 2,
although in abbreviated form. See _supra_, Vol. I. p. 179. The A.V. has
“nourished and brought up” for “begotten and raised up,” and “rebelled
against” for “disregarded.”]
[Footnote 33: So Philo according to Zeller and Schürer, (_op. cit._, p.
374) understands by the Logos “the power of God or the active Divine
intelligence in general.” He designates it as the “idea which comprises
all other ideas, the power which comprises all powers in itself, as the
entirety of the supersensuous world or of the Divine powers.”]
[Footnote 34: Gen. ii. 2.]
[Footnote 35: The Sethiani also quote this. See _supra_, Vol. I. p.
165.]
[Footnote 36: So Ecclesiasticus xxiv. 9, makes Wisdom or Sophia say,
“He created me from the beginning before all the world,” and Proverbs
viii. 23, “I was set up from everlasting,” but neither passage is here
directly quoted.]
[Footnote 37: Gen. i. 2, “moved upon the face of,” A.V.]
[Footnote 38: ἔπλασε, “moulded.”]
[Footnote 39: That is, masculo-feminine.]
[Footnote 40: ἐξεικονισθῇ again. Like the Boundless Power or the Logos?]
[Footnote 41: Quotation already used by the Peratæ. See _supra_, Vol.
I. p. 148. For the Indivisible Point which follows, see the Naassene
chapter, Vol. I. p. 141 _supra_.]
[Footnote 42: Jer. i. 5. “Before I formed thee in the belly I knew
thee,” A.V.]
[Footnote 43: Gen. ii. 10, “to water the garden,” A.V. The four
divisions of the river have been already referred to in different
senses by Justinus and the Naassene author. So far from this repetition
arguing forgery, as contended by Stähelin, it seems only to show that
all these half-Jewish sects found in the traditions recorded in Genesis
an obstacle that they were bound to explain away if possible.]
[Footnote 44: ὀχετοὶ πνεύματος. Cruice and Macmahon translate πνεῦμα
by “spirit,” but it here evidently means “breath” from what is said
later about the nostrils. Cruice mentions that the ancients finding the
arteries empty at death concluded that they were filled by air during
life.]
[Footnote 45: The use of the first person shows that this is
Hippolytus’ and not Simon’s explanation.]
[Footnote 46: ἀναπνοή, “inbreathing.”]
[Footnote 47: Cruice’s emendation.]
[Footnote 48: A hiatus to be filled evidently with some reference to
the mouth. The whole of this passage seems corrupt. From what is said
about the bitterness of the water _Exodus_ should be taste, _Leviticus_
smell and _Numbers_ hearing.]
[Footnote 49: The simile as well as the phrase is to be found in
Aristotle. Cf. his _Organon_, c. viii.]
[Footnote 50: Cf. Isa. ii. 4; Micah iv. 3.]
[Footnote 51: Matt. iii, 10; Luke iii, 9.]
[Footnote 52: So the _Bruce Papyrus_ (ed. Amélineau, p. 231) says that
God when he withdrew all things into Himself, did not so draw “a little
Thought,” and from this one Thought all the worlds were made.]
[Footnote 53: οὐ κοσμεῖται, _non ordinaretur_, Cr., “is not adorned,”
Macmahon.]
[Footnote 54: Reading μητροπάτωρ for μήτηρ πατήρ. Cf. Clem. Alex.,
_Strom._, v. 14 for this word. The other epithets seem to cover
allusions to the Dionysiac, the Osirian and the Attis myths.]
[Footnote 55: ἡ μεταβλητὴ γένεσις, “changeable,” because those thus
born would have to go through many changes of bodies. The phrase is
used by the Naassene author.]
[Footnote 56: A play τροπή, “turning,” and τροφὴ, “nutriment.”]
[Footnote 57: καὶ ἔσται δύναμις ἀπέραντος, ἀπαράλλακτος αἰῶνι
ἀπαραλλάκτῳ μηκέτι γινομένῳ εἰς τὸν ἀπέραντον αἰῶνα; Cr., _et erit
potestas infinita, immutabilis in saeculo immutabili quod non amplius
fit per infinitum sæculum_; “and will become a power indefinite and
unalterable, equal and similar to an unalterable age which no longer
passes into the indefinite age,” Macmahon.]
[Footnote 58: Words in brackets Cruice’s emendation.]
[Footnote 59: παραφυάδες.]
[Footnote 60: δύναμις σιγή, a name compounded of two nouns like Pistis
Sophia. The practice seems peculiar to this literature.]
[Footnote 61: ἀντιστοιχοῦντες, a term used in logic for
“corresponding.” Simon here seems to think of the Egyptian picture of
the air-god Shu, separating the Heaven Goddess Nut from the Earth God
Seb, and supporting the first-named on his hands.]
[Footnote 62: So that the Supreme Being is of both sexes.]
[Footnote 63: This is the exact converse of what has just before been
said about the Father containing Thought within himself.]
[Footnote 64: καταγινομένη, “descending into” (women’s forms)?]
[Footnote 65: This sentence is taken _verbatim_ from Irenæus, I, 16, 2.]
[Footnote 66: ἐπὶ τέγους, literally, “on the roof.”]
[Footnote 67: διὰ τῆς ἰδίας ἐπιγνώσεως; _per suam agnitionem_, Cr.;
“thro’ his own intelligence,” Macmahon.]
[Footnote 68: Reading ἄρχοντες for the ἀρχαί of the Codex.]
[Footnote 69: This sentence also appears _verbatim_ in Irenæus, I, 16,
1.]
[Footnote 70: _i. e._ the prophets.]
[Footnote 71: The whole of this from the last quotation to the end of
the section is also from Irenæus, I, 16, 2.]
[Footnote 72: What these πάρεδροι οἱ λεγομένοι were is hard to say; but
one of the later documents of the _Pistis Sophia_ introduces a fiend in
hell as the “Paredros Typhon.” “Assessor” or “coadjutor,” the meanings
of the word in classical Greek, would here seem inappropriate.]
[Footnote 73: From the beginning of the section to here is from
Irenæus, I, 16, 3.]
[Footnote 74: That is, made up this doctrine.]
[Footnote 75: C. W. King in the _Gnostics and their Remains_ (2nd ed.)
thinks that the omitted word is Persia. There is evidently a _lacuna_
here, and perhaps a considerable one.]
[Footnote 76: Because his age made his pretensions to divinity absurd.
The story given after this directly contradicts all ecclesiastical
tradition which makes Simon perish by the fall of his demon-borne
car while flying in the presence of Nero and St. Peter in the Campus
Martius.]
[Footnote 77: The sources of this chapter are fairly plain. There is
little reason to doubt that Hippolytus had actually seen and read a
book attributed to Simon Magus and called the _Great Announcement_ from
which he quotes, after his manner, inaccurately and carelessly, but
still in good faith. Whether the work was by Simon himself is much more
doubtful, but it was probably in use by the sect that he founded, and
therefore represents with some fidelity his teaching. The style of it
as appears from the extracts here given is a curious mixture of bombast
and philosophical expressions, and bears a strong likeness to certain
passages in the chapters in the fifth book on the Naassenes and the
Peratæ. The other traceable source of the chapter is the work _Against
Heresies_ of St. Irenæus, of which the quotations here given go to
establish the Greek text. But intertwined with this, especially towards
the end of the chapter, is a third thread of tradition, quite different
from that used in the _Clementines_ and other patristic accounts of
Simon’s career, which cannot at present be identified.]
[Footnote 78: With Valentinus, we leave at last the tangled genealogies
and unclean imagery, as it seems to us, of the early traditions of
Western Asia, to approach a form of religion which although not
without fantastic features is yet much more consonant with modern
European thought. Valentinus was, indeed, with the doubtful exception
of Marcion, the first of heretics in the present acceptation of the
term, and many features of his teaching were reproduced later in the
tenets of one or other of the Christian sects. At first sight, the
main difference between his doctrine and that of the Catholic Church
consists in the extraordinary series of personified attributes of the
Deity which he thought fit to interpose between the Supreme Being
and the Saviour. This he probably borrowed either from the later
Zoroastrian idea of the Amshaspands or Archangels who surround Ahura
Mazda, or, more probably, from the _paut neteru_, (“company of the
gods”) of the Egyptian religion of Pharaonic times; and it has been
suggested elsewhere that he probably attached less importance to
dogmatism on the matter than the Fathers would wish to make out. But
Hippolytus’ account of his other doctrines show other divergences
from the Church’s teaching both graver and wider than we should have
gathered from the statements of Irenæus, Tertullian, or Epiphanius.
His view of the ignorance and folly of the Demiurge seems to be taken
over bodily from the Ophite teaching, and, as he identifies him by
implication with the God of the Jews, must logically lead to the
rejection of the whole of the Old Testament except perhaps the Psalms,
Proverbs, and the historical portions. He is also as predestinarian as
Calvin himself, for he assigns complete beatitude to the Pneumatics or
Spirituals only, while relegating the Psychics to an inferior heaven
and dooming the Hylics to complete destruction. Yet the class to which
each of us is assigned has nothing to do with conduct, but is in the
discretion of Sophia, the Mother of all Living.
The most marked novelty in Valentinus’ teaching, however, is the
cause, according to him, of the gift of this partial salvation to man.
This is not, as in the Catholic, the fruit of God’s love towards his
creature, but the last stage of a great scheme for the reconstruction
and purification of the whole universe. First, the Pleroma or Fulness
of the Godhead is purified by the segregation from it of the Ectroma or
abortion to which Sophia in her ignorance and ambition gave birth; then
the Ectroma herself is freed from her passions by the action of Christ
and the Holy Spirit, and made the Mother of Life; and finally this
material world, the creation of the God of the Jews, is to be purged
by the Divine Mission of Jesus from the gross and devilish elements
introduced into it by the ignorant clumsiness of the same God of the
Jews. But this theory was poles asunder from the geocentric ideas of
the universe then current among Greeks, Jews, and Christians alike, and
comes startlingly near the hypotheses of modern science on the very
low place of the earth and humanity in the scheme of things. Whence
Valentinus drew the materials from which he constructed his theory must
be reserved for investigation at some future date; but it is fairly
clear that some part of it was responsible for not a few of the tenets
of the Manichæism which arose some hundred years later to maintain a
strenuous opposition to the Catholic faith for at least nine centuries.
Finally, it may be said that Hippolytus also tells us for the first
time of the divisions among Valentinus’ followers and the different
parts played therein by Ptolemy, Heracleon and others, including that
Bardesanes or Bar Daisan whose name was great in the East as late as Al
Bîrûnî’s day.]
[Footnote 79: οὐκ ἀλόγως ὑπομνησθήσομαι.]
[Footnote 80: τὰ κορυφαιότατα τῶν αὐτοῖς ἀρεσκομένων.]
[Footnote 81: The Codex has Σολομῶν--evidently a copyist’s mistake. Cf.
Plato, _Timæus_, § 7.]
[Footnote 82: Not necessarily the Supreme Being. Clement of Alexandria,
_Paedagogus_, I, 8, says, “God is one, and beyond the One, and above
the Monad itself.”]
[Footnote 83: A fairly common form of Zoroaster. The quotation is
probably from the “Chaldean Oracles” so-called.]
[Footnote 84: Diogenes Laertius, Book VIII, c. 19 quotes from
Alexander’s _Successions of Philosophers_ that Pythagoras in his
Commentaries put first the monad, then the undefined dyad, and said
that from these two numbers proceeded, from numbers signs, from signs
lines, from lines plane figures, from planes solids, and from solids
perceptible bodies consisting of the four elements, fire, water, earth
and air.]
[Footnote 85: Miller would substitute νομιστέον for προστιθέμενον.]
[Footnote 86: These verses are said by Cruice to be in Sextus
Empiricus, but I have not been able to find them in any known writings
of that author.]
[Footnote 87: νοητά, as opposed to αἰσθητά.]
[Footnote 88: Cf. Matt. v. 18.]
[Footnote 89: These “accidents” are enumerated by Aristotle in his
_Metaphysics_, Book IV, and more briefly in his _Organon_. He does not
there acknowledge any indebtedness to Pythagoras.]
[Footnote 90: συνέχει.]
[Footnote 91: φιλία, not ἀγάπη. Macmahon translates “friendship.”]
[Footnote 92: _i. e._ the “Fashioner” = one who makes things out of
previously existing material, but does not create them _ex nihilo_.]
[Footnote 93: διανομή, a word peculiar apparently to the Pythagoreans.
Jowett translates it “regulation.”]
[Footnote 94: ἀπορῥαγάδας, a word unknown in classical Greek, which
should by its etymology mean “chinks” or “rents.” I have taken it as a
mistake for ἀπορῥήματα, which is found in Plutarch.]
[Footnote 95: Not Pythagoras, but Plutarch, _de Exilio_, § 11. He
attributes it to Heraclitus.]
[Footnote 96: The reference seems to be to the _Phaedrus_, t. 1, p. 89
(Bekker).]
[Footnote 97: Or “practise philosophy”: but Hippolytus always uses the
word with a contemptuous meaning.]
[Footnote 98: τὰς ἀρχάς. Evidently a mistake for τοὺς ἄρχοντας.]
[Footnote 99: Hippolytus in the interpretation of these sayings seems
to have followed Diogenes Laertius.]
[Footnote 100: Ἀριθμητής.]
[Footnote 101: So Shu the Egyptian God of Air was figured _between_
Earth (Seb) and Heaven (Nut).]
[Footnote 102: Roeper would read τὸν μέγαν ἐνιαυτὸν ἀπεργάζεται κόσμου,
“completes the Great Year of the world.”]
[Footnote 103: Ἄθηλυς, “without female.”]
[Footnote 104: Σιγή, “Silence.” Cf. the Orphic cosmogony which makes
Night the Mother of Heaven and Earth by Phanes the First-born, who
contains within himself the seeds of all creatures (_Forerunners_, I,
123).]
[Footnote 105: The attribution of this monistic doctrine to Valentinus
is found for the first time here. Irenæus and Tertullian both make him
say that Sige is the spouse of the Supreme Being.]
[Footnote 106: οὐσία. Here as elsewhere in this chapter, save where
an obvious pun is intended, to be translated as in text, and not
“substance,” which is generally the equivalent of ὑπόστασις.]
[Footnote 107: φιλέρημος γὰρ οὐκ ἦν.]
[Footnote 108: Νοῦν καὶ ἀλήθειαν. Here as elsewhere with the names of
Aeons, the English equivalent of the Greek name is first given, and, in
later repetitions, the Greek name transliterated into English.]
[Footnote 109: Λόγον καὶ Ζωήν.]
[Footnote 110: Ἄνθρωπον καὶ Ἐκκλησίαν.]
[Footnote 111: τέλειος used in its double sense of “perfect” and
“complete.”]
[Footnote 112: ὁ Λογος μετὰ τῆς Ζωῆς. The curious conception by which
the two partners in a syzygy are regarded as only one being is very
marked throughout this passage.]
[Footnote 113: ἀγεννησία; “unbegottenness” would be a closer
translation, but is uncouth in this connection. Cf. I, p. 147 _supra_.]
[Footnote 114: Βυθὸς καὶ Μίξις, Ἀγήρατος καὶ Ἕνωσις, Αὐτοφυὴς καὶ
Ἡδονή, Ἀκίνητος καὶ Σύγκρασις, Μονογενὴς καὶ Μακαρία. For the first
name Irenæus (I, i. 1, p. 11, Harvey), has Bythios, thereby making the
substantive into an adjective. So Epiphanius, _Haer._ XXXI (p. 328,
Oehler). This is doubtless correct.]
[Footnote 115: Παράκλητος καὶ Πίστις, Πατρικὸς καὶ Ἐλπίς, Μητρικὸς καὶ
Ἀγάπη, Ἀείνους καὶ Σύνεσις, Ἐκκλησιαστικὸς καὶ Μακαριστός, Θελητὸς καὶ
Σοφία. The Codex is here very corrupt, and for Ἀείνους we may, if we
please, read Αἰώνιος, “Everlasting,” and for Μακαριστός, Μακαριότης,
“Blessedness.” As the name of the male partner in each syzygy is an
adjective and that of the female a substantive it is probable that the
two are intended to be read together, as _e.g._ “Profound Admixture,”
and the like.]
[Footnote 116: Sophia, who plays a great part in the Jewish Apocrypha,
is almost certainly a figure of the prototypal earth like Spenta
Armaiti, her analogue in Mazdeism. Cf. the quotation from Genesis which
follows immediately.]
[Footnote 117: οὐσία. Here “substance” and “essence” would have the
same meaning, and the first-named word is used only to avoid ambiguity.]
[Footnote 118: Gen. i. 2.]
[Footnote 119: Exod. xxxiii. 3.]
[Footnote 120: Ἔκτρωμα.]
[Footnote 121: Ἐπιπροβληθεὶς οὖν ὁ Χριστὸς καὶ τὸ Ἅγιον Πνεῦμα. Christ
and the Holy Spirit are therefore treated as a syzygy and, as it were,
a single person.]
[Footnote 122: μονογενές.]
[Footnote 123: τὸ ὑστέρημα: “the Void,” the converse and opposite of
the Pleroma or “Fulness.”]
[Footnote 124: For this Platonic theory of “partaking,” see n. on I, p.
53 _supra_.]
[Footnote 125: So that the first work of the Mission of Jesus was the
freeing of the whole universe--not only our earth--from the evil which
had entered into it.]
[Footnote 126: ὑποστάτους οὐσίας; “underlying beings.” Here we have the
two ideas of hypostasis, or “substance” in its etymological meaning,
and “essence,” or “being,” side by side.]
[Footnote 127: ψυχικὴν οὐσίαν, _i. e._ the stuff of which the soul is
made.]
[Footnote 128: Ps. cxi. 10; Prov. i. 7; ii. 10.]
[Footnote 129: That is Jehovah, the God of the Jews. Hebdomad as
including the seven “planets.”]
[Footnote 130: Deut. ix. 3.]
[Footnote 131: The “below,” Ὑποκάτω, and “above,” ὑπεράνω, seem to have
become inverted; but as I am not sure whether this is the scribe’s
mistake or not, I have left the text as it is. If we consider (as we
must) that the heaven of Sophia is the highest and those of the seven
worlds below it like steps of a ladder, we have the conception of
Sophia, her son Jaldabaoth, and his six sons, current among the Ophites
as shown in Book V above. The figure of Sophia as a “day” is at once an
instance of the curious habit among the Gnostics of confusing time and
space, and an allusion to the O.T. name of “Ancient of Days.”]
[Footnote 132: I have sought to show elsewhere (_P.S.B.A._, 1901, pp.
48, 49) in opposition to the current explanations that this name,
properly written Beelzebuth, is at once a sort of parody of Jabezebuth
or “Jehovah (Lord) of Hosts,” and the name given to the “ruler of
demons” by the parallelism which, as in Zoroastrianism, makes each good
spirit have its evil counterpart of similar name.]
[Footnote 133: προβεβήκασιν. So in Homer (_Iliad_, VI, 125). Cruice
translates “provenerunt,” Macmahon reading apparently προβεβλήκασιν,
“there has been projected.”]
[Footnote 134: Gen. ii. 7.]
[Footnote 135: 1 Cor. ii. 14. In the preceding passage taken apparently
from Eph. iii. 14 either the Gnostic author or Hippolytus has taken
some strange liberties with the received Text, which see.]
[Footnote 136: It is plain, therefore, that the Valentinians rejected
these parts of the O.T.]
[Footnote 137: John x. 8.]
[Footnote 138: The τὸ μυστήριον τὸ ἀποκεκρυμμένον ἀπὸ τῶν αἰώνων καὶ
ἀπὸ τῶν γενεῶν of Coloss. 1. 26 seems to be what is aimed at.]
[Footnote 139: ἅτε δὴ ἀπὸ τοῦ Δημιουργοῦ λελαλημένα; “inasmuch as they
certainly had been uttered by the Demiurge alone,” Macmahon.]
[Footnote 140: τέλος ἔλαβεν, “received the finishing touch.”]
[Footnote 141: διὰ Μαρίας τῆς Παρθένου. A manifest allusion to the
well-known Gnostic doctrine that Jesus took nothing from His Mother
but came into being through her ὡς διὰ σωλῆνος, “as through a pipe or
conduit.”]
[Footnote 142: Luke i. 35. Ὕψιστος, “the Highest,” was according to M.
Camont (Suppl. _Rev. instr. publ. en Belgique_, 1897) the name by which
the God of Israel was known throughout Asia Minor in pre-Christian
times.]
[Footnote 143: καὶ τοῦ Ὑψίστου. These words are not in the Codex.]
[Footnote 144: τὴν δὲ οὐσίαν ... παράσχῃ. Again “essence” would
etymologically be the better word, but “substance” is used as more
familiar to the English reader.]
[Footnote 145: διδασκαλία. It is significant of the position held by
Valentinus’ teaching in the Christian community that the Valentinians
are often spoken of by the Fathers as a school of thought rather than a
schismatic Church like that founded by Marcion.]
[Footnote 146: γέγωνε τῷ ψυχικῷ. So in Manichæism, the Living Spirit
goes towards the Land of Darkness, where the First Man is entombed
after his defeat by Satan, and “cries in a loud voice, and this voice
was like a sharp sword and discovered the form of the First Man,” who
is thereupon drawn up out of the Darkness and raised to the upper
spheres where dwells the Mother of Life. Cf. _Forerunners_, II, pp.
294, 300, n. 1, and 302, n. 1, and Theodore bar Khôni and other authors
there quoted.]
[Footnote 147: Rom. viii. 11; the words in brackets are not in the
received text.]
[Footnote 148: Gen. iii. 19.]
[Footnote 149: So Cruice. Miller’s text has Ἀρδησιάνης.]
[Footnote 150: ἡ δημιουργικὴ τέχνη, “the process of fashioning.”]
[Footnote 151: διώρθωτο. So that Valentinus was the first to advance
the theory which we find later among the Manichæans that this earth
of ours, instead of being the centre of the universe, was in fact the
lowest and most insignificant of all the worlds, and that salvation
only came to it after the greater universe had been reformed--an
extraordinary conception on the part of one who must have held, like
his contemporaries, geocentric views in astronomy.]
[Footnote 152: Ex. vi. 2, 3.]
[Footnote 153: κατὰ τὴν αὐτὴν ἀκολουθίαν. Here as elsewhere in the
text, ἀκολουθία has the meaning of imitation.]
[Footnote 154: ἰσόζυγος.]
[Footnote 155: ἐπανόρθωσιν, “re-rectification”!]
[Footnote 156: What follows is from Plato’s Second Epistle, which is
thought to have been written after Plato’s return from his third voyage
to Syracuse, and is perhaps rather less suspect than the other Platonic
epistles. Yet the chances of interpolation are so great that no stress
can be laid on the genuineness of any particular passage.]
[Footnote 157: This passage alone is sufficient to make one doubtful
as to the Platonic authorship. If Plato really wanted to keep his
doctrine secret, the last thing he would have done would be to call the
attention of the chance reader to the fact.]
[Footnote 158: Burges translates: “But about a second are the secondary
things and about a third the third.”]
[Footnote 159: Nearly two pages are here omitted from the Epistle.]
[Footnote 160: Possibly an allusion to the Platonic theory that all
learning is remembrance.]
[Footnote 161: Τὰ δὲ νῦν λεγόμενα Σωκράτους. “Said of him” or “said by
him”? The passage is quoted by the Emperor Julian and by Aristides.]
[Footnote 162: So that Hippolytus’ attempt to show that Valentinus
plagiarized from Plato resolves itself into an imaginative
interpretation of a purposely obscure passage in an epistle which is
only doubtfully assigned to Plato. That Valentinus like every one
educated in the Greek learning was influenced by Plato is likely
enough, but that there was any conscious borrowing of tenets is against
probability.]
[Footnote 163: προαρχή τῶν ὅλων Αἰώνων.]
[Footnote 164: That Valentinus is said to have written psalms, see
Tertullian, _de Carne Christi_, I, c. xvii, xx, t. ii, pp. 453, 457
(Oehl.).]
[Footnote 165: Of the sources from which the author of the
_Philosophumena_ drew this account of Valentinus’ doctrine, much has
been written. Hilgenfeld in his _Ketzergeschichte des Urchristenthums_,
and Lipsius in the article “Valentinus” in Smith & Wace’s _D.C.B._,
agree that its main source is the writings of Heracleon. Cruice,
_Études sur les Philosophumena_, on the other hand, thinks it largely
composed of extracts from a work of Valentinus himself, entitled
_Sophia_. Salmon (_Hermathena_, 1885, p. 391), while not committing
himself to a definite pronouncement as to the writer quoted, says that
Hippolytus undoubtedly quoted from a genuine Valentinian treatise,
and that this last is above the suspicion of forgery with which he is
inclined to view other quotations in the _Philosophumena_.]
[Footnote 166: The notice of the followers, real or supposed, of
Valentinus which occupies the remainder of Book VI adds little to our
previous knowledge of their doctrines, being taken almost _verbatim_
from the work of Hippolytus’ teacher, St. Irenæus. It is noteworthy,
however, that although the Table of Contents promises us an account
of (among others) Heracleon, nothing is here said of him, although
that shrewd critic of the Gospels was thought worthy of refutation
by Origen some fifty years later. Yet Hippolytus mentions Heracleon
as being with Ptolemy a leader of the Italic School of Valentinians
which seems to dispose of the theory advanced by Lipsius (Smith &
Wace’s _D.C.B._, s. v. “Valentinus”) that Heracleon was the author
from whom Hippolytus took his account of Valentinus’ own doctrine. Of
Secundus nothing more is known than is set down in the text, while the
“Epiphanes” here mentioned is thought by some to be not a name, but
an adjective, so that the passage would read “a certain _illustrious_
teacher of theirs.” This was certainly the reading of Irenæus’ Latin
translator, who renders the word by “_clarus_.” Is this a roundabout
way of describing Heracleon? As to this see Salmon in _D.C.B._, s. v.
“Heracleon.”]
[Footnote 167: ἀποστᾶσαν καὶ ὑστερήσασαν. Evidently Sophia is meant.]
[Footnote 168: ἀρχή.]
[Footnote 169: Μονότης.]
[Footnote 170: Ἑνότης.]
[Footnote 171: προήκαντο μὴ προέμεναι, _protulerunt non proferendo ex
se_, Cr. So Irenæus, I, xi. 3, p. 104, H. In his note Harvey says that
the passage implies that Henotes and Monotes “put forth as the original
cause the _Beginning_, but so as that the _Beginning_ was eternally
inseparable from their unity.”]
[Footnote 172: Irenæus makes ὁ λόγος, “the Word,” the speaker. So
Tertullian, _adv. Val._, “_quod sermo vocat_.” But it seems more
natural to refer the speech to Epiphanes or “the Illustrious Teacher.”]
[Footnote 173: Προαρχή, Ἀνεννόητος, Ἄρῥητος and Ἀόρατος. The three
first names, however, are not in the text but are restored from
Irenæus, I, v. 2, p. 105, H.]
[Footnote 174: These four new names are: Ἀρχή, Ἀκατάληπτος, Ἀνωνόμαστος
and Ἀγέννητος.]
[Footnote 175: Of Ptolemy we know a little more than we do of Secundus,
a letter by him to his “fair sister Flora” being given by Epiphanius
(_Haer._ XXXIII.) which shows a system not inconsistent with that
described in the text. Unlike Valentinus himself he gives the Father a
spouse, or rather two.]
[Footnote 176: διαθέσεις, perhaps “states.” Cr. and Macmahon translate
“dispositions.”]
[Footnote 177: Hippolytus here suddenly changes from Thelesis to
Thelema. But there is no discoverable difference in the meaning of the
two words.]
[Footnote 178: Words in [ ] from Irenæus.]
[Footnote 179: This Marcus is practically only known to us from the
statements of Irenæus, from which the accounts in the text and in the
later work of Epiphanius are copied. Salmon’s argument (_D.C.B._,
s. v. “Marcus”) that Marcus taught in Asia Minor or Syria, and that
Irenæus himself only knew his doctrines from his writings and the
confessions of his Gaulish followers on their conversion to Catholicism
seems irrefutable. There is no reason to doubt Irenæus’ statement
here repeated that Marcus was a magician, nor the generally accepted
statement of modern writers on Gnosticism that he was a Jew. This
last deduction is supported by his use of Hebrew formulas, of which
Irenæus gives many examples, including one beginning “βασημαχαμοσση”
which appears to be “In the name of Achamoth,” the Hebrew or Aramaic
equivalent of the Greek Sophia. A more cogent argument is that his
identification of the Gnostic Aeons with the letters of the Greek
alphabet and their numerical values is, _mutatis mutandis_, exactly
correspondent to that of the so-called “practical Cabala” of the Jews
which was re-introduced into Europe in the tenth to twelfth centuries,
but which probably goes back to pre-Christian times and is ultimately
derived from the decayed relics of the Chaldæan and Egyptian religions.
On the other hand, Irenæus’ classing of Marcus among the “successors”
or followers of Valentinus is much more open to question. The reverence
he shows for the books of the Old Testament and for the Pentateuchal
account of the Creation, which is indeed the foundation of the greater
part of the system of the Cabala, is inconsistent with the views of
Valentinus, who as we have seen (n. on p. 33 _supra_) must logically
have rejected the inspiration of the Old Testament altogether. St.
Jerome (Ep. 75, _ad Theod._, I, 449), says indeed that Marcus was a
Basilidian, and although we have too little of Basilides’ own writings
to check this statement, it is not impossible that the nomenclature
of the Aeons, which is the chief point in which Valentinus and Marcus
coincide, was common to all three heretics, and perhaps drawn from a
source earlier than them all. The language of the formulas given by
Irenæus but not reproduced by Hippolytus, in several instances bear a
strong likeness to that of the _Great Announcement_ attributed in the
earlier part of this Book to Simon Magus.]
[Footnote 180: εὺχαριστῶν.]
[Footnote 181: αἱματώδη δύναμιν, “the potentiality of blood”?]
[Footnote 182: ἐλεγχόμενος. The word shows that by “refutation” the
author generally means “exposure.”]
[Footnote 183: He has not done so, unless in some part which has been
lost.]
[Footnote 184: ἐδίδου.]
[Footnote 185: Γνῶσις.]
[Footnote 186: ὑγραῖς οὐσίαις. Here οὐσία is used in the English sense
of “substance.” No such substances are mentioned in Book IV as it has
come down to us.]
[Footnote 187: The wine used in the Marcosian Eucharist was evidently
_mixtum_, not _merum_. Some effervescent powder is indicated.]
[Footnote 188: ἐξαφανίσας; Cr. translates _seduxit_.]
[Footnote 189: εὐκόλους ... πρὸς τὸ ἁμαρτάνειν. Cf. the doctrine of
certain Antinomian sects that “God sees no sin in His elect.”]
[Footnote 190: Ἀπολύτρωσις, perhaps “Ransom.”]
[Footnote 191: πανούργημα.]
[Footnote 192: In one of the documents of the _Pistis Sophia_, (p.
238, Copt) a “mystery” to be spoken “into the two ears” of an initiate
about to die is described. The idea was evidently to provide him with
a password which would enable him to escape the “punishments” of the
intermediate state, and is to be traced to Egyptian beliefs.]
[Footnote 193: ἐπ’ ἐσχάτων, perhaps “to the utmost.”]
[Footnote 194: ἀφορμαί. In the _Philosophumena_, the word nearly always
bears this construction.]
[Footnote 195: οἱ ἐντυχόντες.]
[Footnote 196: ἀεὶ ἀρνεῖσθαι. Cf. the “_Geist der stets verneint_” of
Goethe.]
[Footnote 197: συγκεχωρήσθω.]
[Footnote 198: “His attempted heresy.”]
[Footnote 199: Like the rest of this section and most of this chapter,
Hippolytus here follows Irenæus _verbatim_. Why the apparition of the
Tetrad should be more supportable in female than in male shape can only
be guessed; but the frequent personification of the Great Goddess of
Western Asia may have had something to do with it.]
[Footnote 200: οὗ πατὴρ οὐδεὶς ἦν, “whose father was no one”--a curious
expression in place of the more concise ἀπάτωρ.]
[Footnote 201: καὶ ἦν ἡ συλλαβὴ αὐτοῦ στοιχείων τεσσάρων, “and taken
together it was of four letters.” He is punning here on the double
sense of στοιχεῖον as meaning both “letter” and “element.” In the Magic
Papyrus of Leyden which calls itself “Monas, the 8th (book?) of Moses,”
there is a curious account of how the light and the rest of creation
were brought into being by the successive words or rather the laughter
of the Creator. Cf. Leemans, _Papyri Græci_, etc., Leyden, 1885, II,
pp. 83 ff.]
[Footnote 202: γράμματα.]
[Footnote 203: χαρακτῆρα, “impress,” or character as we might say Greek
characters or script. The different meanings of στοιχεῖα, γράμματα, and
χαρακτήρ are here well marked.]
[Footnote 204: So Irenæus.]
[Footnote 205: τὴν ἀποκατάστασιν. This Return to the Deity was, as has
been shown above, the great preoccupation of all these Gnostic sects.
They may have borrowed it from the Stoic philosophy. Cf. Arnold, _Roman
Stoicism_, p. 193.]
[Footnote 206: The primitive Church attributed great power to the
ritual utterance of the word Amen. Thus Ignatius’ second Epistle to the
Ephesians: “There was hidden from the ruler of this world the virginity
of Mary, and the birth of our Lord, and the three mysteries of the
shout ... and hereby ... magic began to be dissolved and all bonds to
be loosed and the ancient kingdom and the error of evil, is destroyed”
(Cureton’s translation, London, 1845, p. 15); but Lightfoot would read
κήροξις, “proclamation,” for κραυγή, “shout.” In the _Pistis Sophia_
the word Amen is used to denote a class of Powers concerned apparently
with the organization of the Kerasmos or semi-material world and called
sometimes “the Three” and sometimes “the Seven Amens.”]
[Footnote 207: τοὺς [φθόγγους]. The word in brackets is not in the
Codex, but is supplied from the corresponding passage in Irenæus.]
[Footnote 208: πρόσωπον, a word which, as Hatch noted, is used for the
character or part played by an actor in a drama. Matt. xviii. 10 is
here evidently alluded to.]
[Footnote 209: Cf. the Stoic theory of λόγοι σπερματικοί or
“seed-Powers,” for which, see Arnold, _op. cit._, p. 161.]
[Footnote 210: προήκατο.]
[Footnote 211: That is to say, before Chaos was organized and the Aeons
brought into existence.]
[Footnote 212: A plain reference to the Ectroma or Sophia Without.]
[Footnote 213: ἰδίᾳ τῶν γραμμάτων γραφέντων (Miller). The Codex has διὰ
for ἰδίᾳ and γραφέντος for γραφέντων. Cruice bungles the passage and
Macmahon omits it. It is not found in Irenæus.]
[Footnote 214: _e. g._ the δ can be written δ, ε, λ, τ, α.]
[Footnote 215: ὑπόστασις.]
[Footnote 216: A pun on the name of the Supreme Father, Bythos or the
Deep.]
[Footnote 217: φιλοπονία and ματαιοπονία.]
[Footnote 218: Or Truth.]
[Footnote 219: _i. e._ Man.]
[Footnote 220: It would seem from this that Marcus, following perhaps
in this the Anatolic School of Valentinus, made Sige not the spouse of
Bythos but merely another name for Aletheia.]
[Footnote 221: τῆς διανοίας νόημα. As if he were trying to avoid
writing the word Nous.]
[Footnote 222: Hippolytus or Marcus here plays upon the identity of
the ἐπίσημον or digamma, the name of the sixth letter in the Greek
alphabet, which was used for numeration only, and the adjective
ἐπίσημον, “illustrious.”]
[Footnote 223: The word in brackets supplied from Irenæus.]
[Footnote 224: ὧν τὰ μεγέθη. The allusion seems to be again to Matt.
xviii. 10. The angels might well be considered on the Valentinian
theory the greater parts or counterparts of their terrestrial spouses.
In Epiphanius τὸ Μέγεθος seems to be used for the Supreme Being. Cf.
_Panar. Haer._, XXXI, p. 314, Oehl. The passage is said to be suspect.]
[Footnote 225: One of the later documents of the _Pistis Sophia_ speaks
repeatedly of certain τριδυναμεις or τριδυναμοι (both spellings are
used) which seem to hold a very exalted rank in the scale of beings,
alike in the spiritual and the material parts of the universe.]
[Footnote 226: φ, χ, θ, η, κ, τ, β, γ, δ.]
[Footnote 227: λ, μ, ν, ρ, ς, ζ, ξ, ψ.]
[Footnote 228: τὰ φωνήεντα.]
[Footnote 229: α, ε, η, ι, ο, υ, ω.]
[Footnote 230: μορφὴν αὐτοῖς περιεποίησεν, “has put shape round them.”]
[Footnote 231: Reading Ἐπειδὴ with Irenæus instead of the Ἐπὶ δὲ of
Hippolytus.]
[Footnote 232: So that the “ineffable” name of Christ consisted of 30
letters. So Epiphanius, _Haer._, XXXIV, p. 448, Oehl. No guess hitherto
made as to its transliteration into Greek letters seems entirely
satisfactory; but Harvey (_Iren._, I, p. 146, nn. 1, 2), shows that χὶ,
ρὼ, εἴψιλον (for which spelling Nigidius Figulus and Aulus Gellius are
quoted), ἰῶτα, σῖγμα, ταῦ, οὐ (for ὀμικρόν), and, again, σῖγμα, can be
made to count 30.]
[Footnote 233: The text has ἀναλογίας, for which Miller rightly
restores οἰκονομίας from Irenæus. Cf. p. 318 Cr. _infra_.]
[Footnote 234: πεφηνέναι. Irenæus has πεφυκέναι, “grew.”]
[Footnote 235: See the Transfiguration according to Matt. xvii. and
Mark ix.]
[Footnote 236: Or “the Episemon.”]
[Footnote 237: π = 80, ε 5, ρ 100, ι 10, σ 200, τ 300, ε 5, ρ 100, α 1
= 801. So Α 1 + Ω 800 = 801.]
[Footnote 238: Ἡ παρασκευή. “The Preparation” (for the Passover) _i.
e._ Friday.]
[Footnote 239: τὸν τῶν ἕξ ἀριθμὸν, δύναμιν ποιήσεως κτλ. So Irenæus’
Latin translation, “_Scientem eum numerum qui est sex virtutem
fabricationis et regenerationem habentem_.”]
[Footnote 240: 6 + 24 = 30.]
[Footnote 241: τῆς αὐτοβουλήτου βουλῆς ... ὁ καρπός, “the Fruit of the
self-counselled Council,” Irenæus.]
[Footnote 242: μιμήσει τὴς Ἑβδομάδος δυνάμεως ἐψύχωσε κόσμον, “imparted
in imitation of the seven powers animation to this world,” (Macmahon);
but see Irenæus in _loc. cit._]
[Footnote 243: As before, this probably means “Desire.”]
[Footnote 244: This seems the first time we meet with the idea of “The
Column of Praises” of the Manichæans which mounting from the earth and
bearing with it the prayers and praises of mankind plays with them a
considerable part in the redemption of Light from Matter.]
[Footnote 245: Ps. viii. 2.]
[Footnote 246: Ps. xix. 1.]
[Footnote 247: Irenæus puts what follows into the mouth of “the
all-wise Sige.” A section dealing with the name of Aletheia is omitted
by Hippolytus.]
[Footnote 248: Or perhaps “Unity in Solitude.”]
[Footnote 249: _i. e._ “Ineffable.”]
[Footnote 250: Four, unless we spell the word as he apparently does,
Σειγή.]
[Footnote 251: In the section omitted (see n. 2 _supra_) the “body of
Aletheia” is said to be δωδεκάμελος or “of 12 members,” which points to
some different notation.]
[Footnote 252: Cf. Rev. xix. 11-13.]
[Footnote 253: As Harvey (_Iren._, I, p. 145, n. 3) points out, this
forced isopsephism is only reached by spelling Eta ηι and the Iota in
Χριστός εἶ. He quotes Aulus Gellius in support.]
[Footnote 254: The words in brackets ( ) are not in Irenæus and are
probably the addition of some commentator.]
[Footnote 255: The Codex has χρι.]
[Footnote 256: π = 80, ε = 5, ρ = 100, ι = 10, σ = 200, τ = 300, ε =
5, ρ = 100, α = 1: total 801. It is evident, therefore that Marcus
considered Christ and the Holy Spirit to be the same Person.]
[Footnote 257: ἄρῥητον γένεσιν, “unspoken derivation”?]
[Footnote 258: δεκαοκτώ, an unusual word, unknown to classical Greek.]
[Footnote 259: Words in square brackets [ ] supplied from Irenæus.]
[Footnote 260: δημιουργία. Here, as elsewhere, the word implies
construction from previously existing matter.]
[Footnote 261: τὸν τόπον ἀναπεπληρωκέναι.]
[Footnote 262: Cf. Luke i. 35.]
[Footnote 263: κατ’ οἰκονομίαν. This seems here the meaning of the
word. See Döllinger, _First Age of Christianity_, Eng. ed., p. 170,
n. 2, Hatch; _Influence of Greek Ideas upon the Christian Church_, p.
131; Tollinton, _Clement of Alexandria_, II, p. 13, and n. 1, for other
meanings.]
[Footnote 264: This seems unintelligible unless we suppose the “body of
Aletheia,” said above to be the number 12, to be the heaven known as
“the Place of Truth.” Cf. _Pistis Sophia_, p. 128, Copt.]
[Footnote 265: The same expression is used in the _Pistis Sophia_ where
Jesus “sows” a power of light in Elizabeth the mother of John the
Baptist. Cf. p. 12, Copt.]
[Footnote 266: Or “Arrangement.” Marcus, perhaps here imitating
Valentinus, postulates several Saviours, one of whom restores order in
the arrangement of the Aeons before coming to this earth.]
[Footnote 267: In Irenæus there follows here a lengthy “refutation”
of Marcus’ doctrines and a poem condemning him and his teaching which
some think to be the work of Pothinus, Irenæus’ martyred predecessor at
Lyons.]
[Footnote 268: With this sentence, Hippolytus again picks up his
quotations from Irenæus.]
[Footnote 269: πάθος, “a passion” or “The Passion”?]
[Footnote 270: πεπλανῆσθαι.]
[Footnote 271: Irenæus’ Latin version here makes better
sense:--_Similiter et a duodecade abscedentum unam virtutem perisse
divinant et hanc esse mulierem quae perdiderit drachmam, et accenderit
lucernam, et invenerit eam._]
[Footnote 272: α = 1, μ 40, η 8, ν 50, total 99. Writers of the
sub-Apostolic age seem to have laid much stress on the miraculous power
of the word Amen when uttered in unison. Cf. the Epistle of Ignatius to
the Ephesians (Cureton’s translation), p. 15, as to the “mysteries of
the shout.”]
[Footnote 273: Thus α = 1, β 2, γ 3, δ 4, ε 5, ζ 7, η 8 = 30.]
[Footnote 274: εἰς ὁλόκληρον. Because the decad is a “perfect” number.]
[Footnote 275: ἐπισυμπλέκοντες καὶ δεκαπλασιάσαντες.]
[Footnote 276: τῆς ἄνω οἰκονομίας. The word can here mean nothing else.]
[Footnote 277: α = 1, β 2, γ 3, δ 4, ε 5, ζ 7, η 8, θ 9, ι 10, κ 20, λ
30 = 99.]
[Footnote 278: Because the Episemon has no τόπος.]
[Footnote 279: στοιχεῖον here used for “character.”]
[Footnote 280: ΛΛ = M.]
[Footnote 281: ὑστέρημα; the usual Gnostic name for the Void.]
[Footnote 282: This section passes over Irenæus’ refutation of the
last, and forms the beginning of the Xth Chap. (p. 164, H.).]
[Footnote 283: There must be some mistake here, as the Sun and Moon
were included among the seven planetary heavens.]
[Footnote 284: Not of course the Egyptian god, but the Gnostic “Limit”
or Cross. The passage is not very clear.]
[Footnote 285: Irenæus has φαεινῆς, “radiant,” and the text κενῆς,
“empty”; Irenæus’ Latin version “_non apparentes_” or invisible.
Probably μεγάλης was the original word.]
[Footnote 286: κατὰ κάθετον. Macmahon thinks this refers to the
position of the sun, which is unnecessary.]
[Footnote 287: Irenæus omits the words “of the Ogdoad.”]
[Footnote 288: κατάλυσιν λαβεῖν, “receive dissolution.”]
[Footnote 289: καινότερα. The text has κενώτερα, “more inane.”]
[Footnote 290: περιεργίας, “bye-work.”]
[Footnote 291: Κολάρβασος. The name which is repeated by Tertullian,
Philaster and Theodoret can be traced back to the single passage in
Irenæus, where it appears in connection with the name Σιγή as “the
Sige of Colarbasus.” A German commentator long since suggested that
it was not the name of a brother heretic or follower of Marcus, but a
corruption of the words קל־ארבע Qol-Arba, or the “Voice of the Four,”
and this seems now generally accepted. As most if not all of Marcus’
pretended revelations are said to have been dictated to him by an
apparition of the Supreme Tetrad, he may well have called the book in
which they were written and which seems to have been known to Irenæus,
by some such name.]
[Footnote 292: It seems needless to point out that the whole of these
chapters dealing with the real or supposed successors of Valentinus is
taken direct from Irenæus, and that they have no relation to any other
author.]
[Sidenote: p. 333.] BOOK VII
BASILIDES, SATURNILUS, AND OTHERS
1. These are the contents of the 7th (Book) of the _Refutation of All
Heresies_.
2. What is the opinion of Basilides, and that he, having been struck
with the doctrines of Aristotle, constructed his heresy from them.
3. And what things Satornilus, who flourished at the same time as
Basilides, says.
4. How Menander set himself to declare that the world came into being
by angels.
5. What was the madness of Marcion, and that his doctrine is neither
new nor (taken) from the Holy Scriptures, but comes from Empedocles.
6. How Carpocrates talks foolishness, and thinks existing things to
have been produced by angels.
7. That Cerinthus in no way framed his opinion from Scripture, but out
of the teachings of the Egyptians.
[Sidenote: p. 334.] 8. What are the Ebionites’ opinions, and that they
prefer to cleave to the Jewish customs.
9. How Theodotus also erred, having borrowed some things from the
Ebionites [but others from the Gnostics].
10. And what was taught by Cerdo, who both declared things (taken) from
Empedocles and wickedly put forward Marcion.
11. And how Lucian, becoming a disciple of Marcion, did not blush to
blaspheme God.
12. Of whom Apelles becoming a disciple, did not teach the same things
as (the rest of) the school, but being moved by the doctrines of the
physicists, supposed an essence for the universe.
1. _About Basilides._[1]
[Sidenote: p. 335.] 13. Seeing that the doctrines of the heretics are
like a sea lashed into waves by the force of the winds, their hearers
ought to sail through them in quest of the calm harbour. For such a
sea is both wild and hard to overpass, as the Sicilian (sea) is said
to be, wherein are fabled to be Cyclops and Charybdis and Scylla
and ... the Sirens’ rock.[2] Which sea the Greek poets make out that
Odysseus sailed through, skilfully availing himself of the terror of
those fierce beasts: for their cruelty to those sailing among them
was notorious. But the Sirens, singing clearly and musically for the
beguiling of those sailing past, persuaded with their sweet voices
those who listened to approach them. And they say that Odysseus,
hearing this, stopped with wax his companions’ ears, but having had
himself bound to the mast sailed without danger past the Sirens while
listening to their song. Which I advise those who meet with them to
do, and either having on account of weakness stopped their ears with
wax to sail through the teachings of the heretics without listening to
what, like the shrill song of the Sirens, might easily persuade them to
pleasure; or else to bind themselves to the Cross of Christ, hearkening
faithfully (to Him) and (thus) not to be harassed, being persuaded
(only) by Him to whom they [Sidenote: p. 336.] are bound and standing
upright.[3]
14. Since now we have set forth in the six Books before this, the
(opinions) which have gone before, it seems now that we should not
keep silent about those of Basilides which are those of Aristotle the
Stagirite, and not of Christ. But although the doctrines of Aristotle
have been before expounded, we shall not shrink from now setting them
forth in epitome, so that the teacher by their closer comparison may
readily perceive that the sophisms of Basilides are those of Aristotle.
15. Aristotle, then, divides being[4] into three. For one part of
it is genus, another, as he says, species,[5] and another something
undivided.[6] But the atom is so called, not because [Sidenote: p.
337.] of the smallness of its body, but because by its nature it can in
no way be cut. But the genus is, as it were, a heap composed of many
different seeds. From which heap-resembling genus, all the species
of existent things are severed;[7] and it is (one) genus which is
sufficient for all things which have come into being. In order that
this may be clear, I will point out an example whereby the whole theory
of the Peripatetic can be retraced.
16. Let us say that there exists simply “animal,”[8] not any particular
animal. This “animal” is neither ox, nor horse, nor man, nor god, nor
anything else that can anyhow be apparent, but simply “animal.” From
this “animal” the species of all animals have their substance.[9] And
the undifferentiated[10] “animal” is the substance of the animals who
have been produced in species[11] but is yet none of them. For an
animal is man, who takes his beginning [Sidenote: p. 338.] from that
“animal,” and an animal is horse who does likewise. The horse and ox
and dog and each of the other animals takes its beginning from the
simple “animal” which is none of them.
17. But if that “animal” is not one of these, (then) the substance of
the things which have been produced has, according to Aristotle, come
into being from the things which are not: for the “animal” whence these
have severally received it is not one (of them). But, while being none
(of them), it has become the one beginning of things which are. But who
it is who has sent down this beginning[12] of the things which have
been produced later, we shall see when we come to its proper place.
18. Since the threefold essence is, as he says, genus, species and
atom, and we have granted[13] “animal” to be genus, and man to be
species already differentiated from the multitude of animals, but at
the same time commingled with them and not yet transformed into a
species of substantial being,[14]--I, when I give form to the man taken
apart from the genus, call him by the name of Socrates [Sidenote: p.
339.] or of Diogenes or any one of the many names (there are), and
when I (thus) restrict with a name the man who from genus has become
species, I call such being an individual.[15] For the genus is divided
into species and the species into an atom; but the atom when restricted
by a name cannot by its nature be divided into anything else, as we
have divided each of the things aforesaid.
This Aristotle calls essence in its first, chief, and strictest sense,
nor is it said of any subject nor as existing in any subject.[16] But
he speaks of the subject as if it were genus when he said “animal” of
all the animals severally ranged under it, such as an ox, a horse, and
the rest, describing them by a common name. For it is true to say that
man is an animal, and a horse is an animal and an ox is an animal and
all the rest. This is subjective, the one (name) being likewise capable
of being said of many [Sidenote: p. 340.] and different species.[17]
For neither a horse nor an ox differs from man _quâ_ animal; for the
definition of animal fits all the aforesaid animals alike. For what
is an animal? If we define it, a common definition will include all
the animals. For an animal is a living,[18] feeling being, such as a
man, a horse and all the rest. But, “in the Subject,” he says, is that
which exists in anything, not as part of it, but as being incapable
of existing apart from that wherein it is, (and is) each[19] of the
accidents of being. The which is called Quality because by it we say
_what_ certain things are, as, for instance, white, green, black,
just, unjust, prudent and such like. But none of these (qualities) can
come into being by itself, but must needs be in[20] something. But, if
neither the “animal,” which is the word I use for all living beings
taken severally, nor the “accidents” which are found to occur in all
of them, can come into being of themselves, then from those things
which do not exist, the individual things[21] are developed and the
triply-divided essence is not compounded[22] from other things. Hence
Being[23] so called in its first and chiefest and strictest sense,
[Sidenote: p. 341.] exists according to Aristotle from those things
which do not exist.[24]
19. About Being[25] then enough has been said. But Being is called
not only genus, species and individual; but also matter, form and
privation. But there is no difference among these while the division
stands. And Being being such as it is, the ordering of the cosmos
came about automatically in the same way. The cosmos is according to
Aristotle divided into many [and different] parts; [and] the part of
the cosmos which exists from the earth as far as the moon is without
providence or governance and has its rise only in its own nature.
But that which is beyond the moon, is ordered with all order and
providence and is (so) governed up to the surface of heaven. But the
(same) surface is a certain fifth essence renewed from all the elements
of nature wherefrom the cosmos is made up, and this is Aristotle’s
“Quintessence,” being as it were a hypercosmic essence. And his system
of philosophy is [Sidenote: p. 342.] divided so as to agree with the
division of the cosmos. For there is by him a treatise on physics
called _Acroasis_, wherein he has treated of the doings of Nature,
not of Providence, from the Earth to the Moon. And there is also his
_Metaphysics_, another special work thus entitled, concerning the
things which take place beyond the Moon. And there is also his work _On
the Quintessence_, wherein he theologizes.[26] Like this also is the
division of the universals as they are defined by type in Aristotle’s
philosophy. But his work _On the Soul_ is puzzling; for it would be
impossible in three whole books to say what Aristotle thinks about the
soul. For what he gives as the definition of the soul is easy to say;
but what is explained by the definition is hard to find. For, he says,
the soul is an entelechy of the physical organism. What this is would
need many words and great enquiry. But the God who is the cause of all
these fair beings [Sidenote: p. 343.] is one, even to one speculating
for a very long time, more difficult to be known than is the soul. Yet
the definition which Aristotle gives of God, is not hard to be known,
but impossible to be understood. For He, he says, is a conception
of conception which is altogether non-existent. But the cosmos is
according to Aristotle imperishable and eternal; for it contains
nothing faulty and is governed by Nature and Providence. And Aristotle
has not only put forth books on Nature and the Cosmos and Providence
and God,[27] but there is also a certain treatise by him on ethics
which is called _The Ethical Books_ wherein he builds up a good ethics
for his hearers out of a poor one. If, then, Basilides be found not
only potentially but in the very words and names to have transferred
the doctrines of Aristotle to our evangelical and soul-saving teaching,
what remains but by restoring these extraneous matters to their
(proper) authors to prove to Basilides’ disciples that, as they are
heathenish, Christ will profit them nothing?
[Sidenote: p. 344.] 20. Now Basilides and Isidore, Basilides’ true son
and disciple, say that Matthias recounted to them secret[28] discourses
which he had heard from the Saviour in private teaching.[29] We see
then how plainly Basilides together with Isidore and their whole band
belie not only Matthias but also the Saviour. There was, he says,
[a time] when Nothing was, not even the nothing of existing things,
but baldly and unreservedly and without any sophism, nothing at all.
But when I say, says he, that [this] _was_, I do not say that this
existed, but I speak thus to signify what I wish to indicate. I say
then that nothing at all existed. For, says he, that which is named is
plainly not ineffable; for at any rate we call one thing ineffable,
but another not ineffable. For truly that which is not even ineffable
is not named ineffable, but is, he says, above every name which is
named. For neither are there names enough for the cosmos, he says, so
diverse is it, but there is a lack of them. Nor do [Sidenote: p. 345.]
I undertake, says he, to find proper names for everything; but one must
silently understand in the mind not their names, but the properties of
the things named. For identity of names has made confusion and error
concerning things[30] among those who hear them. And they who first
made this appropriation and theft from the Peripatetic lead astray the
folly of those who herd with them. For Aristotle who was born many
generations earlier than Basilides, was the first to set forth in the
_Categories_ a system of homonyms which these men expound as their own
and as a novelty [derived] from the secret discourses of Matthias.
21. When nothing [existed], neither matter, nor essence, nor the
simple nor the compound, nor [that which is conceived by the mind]
nor that which cannot be [so] conceived, [nor that which is perceived
by the senses][31] nor that which cannot be [so] perceived, nor
man, nor angel, nor God, nor generally any of the things which are
named or apprehended by sensation, or of things[32] which can be
[Sidenote: p. 346.] conceived by the mind but can be thus and even
more minutely described by all:--(then) [the] God-who-was-Not--whom
Aristotle calls Concept of Concept, but (Basilides) Him-who-is-Not,
without conception, perception, counsel, choice, passion or desire
willed to create a cosmos. But I say (only) for the sake of clearness,
says he, that He willed. I signify that he did this without will or
conception or perception; and [the] cosmos was not that which later
became established in its expanse and diversity,[33] but a Seed of a
cosmos. And the Seed of the cosmos contained all things within itself,
as the grain of mustard (seed) collects into the smallest space and
contains within itself all things at once:--the roots, stem, branches
and the numberless leaves, with the seeds begotten by the plant, and
often again those grown by many other plants. Thus the God-who-was-Not
made the cosmos from things which were not,[34] casting [Sidenote: p.
347.] down and planting[35] a certain single seed containing within
itself the whole seed-mass[36] of the cosmos. But in order that I
may make clearer what these (men) say, it was even as an egg of some
gorgeous and parti-coloured bird such as a peacock of some other yet
more variegated and many-coloured, contains within it, though one, many
patterns[37] of multiform and many-coloured and diversely-constructed
beings[38]--so, says he, the non-existent seed of the cosmos cast down
by the God-who-was-Not contained (a Seed-mass) at once multiform and
(the source) of many beings.[39]
22. All things, then, which are to be described, and those which not
having yet been discovered must be left out of the account, were
destined to be fitted for the cosmos which was to come into being
at the proper time by the help given to it by such and so great a
God, whose quality[40] the creature can neither conceive nor define.
And these things existed stored within the seed, as, in a new-born
[Sidenote: p. 348.] child, we see teeth and the power of fatherhood
and brains accrue later; and those things which belong to the man but
do not at first exist, evolve gradually out of the child. For it would
be impossible to say that any projection by the God-who-was-Not became
something non-existent,--since Basilides entirely shuns and has in
horror [the notion of] substances of things begotten [arising] by way
of projection.[41] For what, says he, is the need of projection or of
any substructure of matter in order that God may fashion a cosmos as
the spider makes webs, or mortal man takes brass or wood or some other
portion of matter to work with?).--But He spoke, says he, and it came
to pass; and this is, as these [heretics] say, what Moses spake:--“Let
there be light and there was light.”[42] Whence, says he, came the
light? From nothing. For it is not written says he, whence it came, but
only that it came forth from the word of the speaker. For the speaker,
says he, was not, nor did that which was spoken [formerly] exist. The
seed of the cosmos, he says, came into being from non-existent things
[and this seed is] the word which was spoken: “Let there be light.”
And this, says he, is the saying in the Gospels: “This is [Sidenote:
p. 349.] the true light which lighteneth every man who cometh into the
world.”[43] It takes its beginnings[44] from that seed and gives light.
This is the seed which contains within itself all the Seed-Mass which
Aristotle says is the genus divided into boundless species, since we
divide from the non-existent animal ox, horse [and] man. Further, of
the underlying cosmic seed, they say, “whatever I may say came into
being after this, seek not to know whence it came.” For it contained
all seeds stored and shut up within itself, as it were things which
were not, but which were foreordained to exist by the God-who-was-Not.
Let us see then what they say came into being in the first, second
or third place from the cosmic seed. There existed (Basilides) says
within the seed itself, a Sonhood, threefold throughout, of the same
essence[45] with the God-who-was-Not and begotten of the things that
were not. Of this triple divided Sonhood, one part was subtle, (one
coarse) and one wanting purification. Now the subtle (part) [Sidenote:
p. 350.] straightway and as it became the first emission of the seed by
the One-who-was-Not, escaped and ascended and went on high from below
with the speed described by the poet--
“like wing or thought,”[46]
and came, he says, before the One-who-was-Not. For towards him every
nature strains on account of his exceeding beauty and bloom,[47] but
each differently. But the coarser part still remaining in the seed,
although resembling the other,[48] could not go on high, for it lacked
the fineness of division which the ascending Sonhood had of itself,
and was (therefore) left behind. Then the coarser Sonhood wings itself
with some such wing as that wherewith Plato, Aristotle’s teacher,
equips the soul in the _Phaedrus_,[49] and Basilides calls the same
not a wing but Holy Spirit, clothed wherewith the Sonhood both gives
and receives benefit. It gives it because a bird’s wing taken by
itself and severed from the bird would neither become uplifted nor
high in [Sidenote: p. 351.] air, nor would the bird be uplifted and
high in air if deprived of the wing. This then is the relation which
the Sonhood bears to the Spirit and the Spirit to the Sonhood. For
the Sonhood borne aloft by the Spirit as by a wing bears aloft the
wing, (that is the Spirit) and draws nigh to the subtler Sonhood and
to the God-who-was-Not and fashions all things from the non-existent.
But [the Spirit] cannot abide with the Sonhood for it is not of the
same essence,[50] nor has it the same nature as the Sonhood. But just
as dry and pure air is naturally fatal to fishes, so naturally to the
Holy Spirit was that place, more ineffable than the ineffable ones and
higher than all names, which is the seat at once of the God-who-was-Not
and of the [first] Sonhood. Therefore the Sonhood left the Spirit near
that blessed place which cannot be conceived nor characterized[51] by
any speech, [yet] not altogether alone nor [completely] severed from
the Sonhood. For just as when a sweet perfume is poured into a jar,
even if the jar is carefully emptied a certain fragrance of the perfume
still remains and is left behind, and although [Sidenote: p. 352.] the
perfume be removed from the jar, the jar retains the fragrance, but not
the perfume--so the Holy Spirit remained bereft of and severed from the
Sonhood. And this is the saying: “As the perfume on Aaron’s head ran
down to his beard.”[52] This is the savour carried down by the Holy
Spirit from on high into the Formlessness[53] and Space of this world
of ours, whence the Sonhood first went on high as on the wings of an
eagle and borne on his loins. For all things, he says, strain upward
from below, from the worse to the better. But there is thus nothing of
those things which are among the better which is immovable, so that it
cannot come below. But the third Sonhood, he says, which is in need of
purification, remains in the great heap of the Seed-mass giving and
receiving benefits. And in what manner it does this, we shall see later
in the fitting place.[54]
[Sidenote: p. 353.] 23. Now when the first and second ascensions of the
Sonhood[55] had come to pass, and the Holy Spirit remained by itself in
the way described, being set midway between the hypercosmic firmaments
and the cosmos--for Basilides divides the things that are into two
first made and primary divisions, one of which is called by him an
ordered world,[56] and the other hypercosmic things--and between these
two [he places] the Boundary Spirit,[57] which same is at once Holy and
holds abiding in it the savour of the Sonhood, it being the firmament
which is above the heaven.[58] [When these ascensions had taken place],
there escaped from and was engendered from the cosmical seed and the
Seed-mass, the Great Ruler, the head of the cosmos, a certain beauty
and greatness and power which cannot be spoken.[59] For he is, says
[Basilides], more ineffable than the ineffable ones, mightier than the
mighty, and better than all the fair ones you can describe. He, when
engendered, burst through, soared aloft, and was borne right up on high
as far as the firmament, but stayed there thinking that the firmament
was the end of all ascension [Sidenote: p. 354.] and uplifting and
not imagining that there was anything at all beyond this. And he
became wiser, mightier, more eminent, and more luminous and everything
which you can describe as excelling in beauty all the other cosmic
things which lay before him, save only the Sonhood left behind in the
Seed-mass. For he knew not that [this Sonhood] was wiser and mightier
and better than he. Therefore he deemed himself Lord and King[60] and
wise architect, and set about the creation in detail[61] of the ordered
world. And in the first place he did not think it meet for him to be
alone, but created for himself and engendered from the things which
lay below him a Son much better and wiser than himself. For all this
the God-who-was-Not had foreordained when he let fall the Seed-mass.
When, therefore, [the Great Ruler] beheld his Son, he wondered, and was
filled with love and astounded: for so [splendid] did the beauty of the
son appear to the Great Ruler. And the Ruler seated him at his right
hand. This is what is called by Basilides the Ogdoad where sits the
Great Ruler. Then the Great Wise Demiurge fashioned the whole of the
[Sidenote: p. 355.] heavenly, that is, the aethereal creation. But the
Son begotten by him set it working and established it, being much wiser
than the Demiurge himself.[62]
24. This [creation] is according to Aristotle, the “entelechy”[63]
of the organic natural body, the soul activating the body, without
which the body can effect nothing, a something greater and more
manifest and wiser than the body. The theory therefore which Aristotle
first taught regarding the soul and the body, Basilides explained as
referring to the Great Ruler and his so-called son. For the Ruler
according to Basilides begat a son; and Aristotle says that the soul
is an entelechy, the work and result[64] of the organic natural body.
As, then, the entelechy controls the body, so the son, according to
Basilides, controls the more ineffable God of the Ineffables. All
things soever then which are in the aether up to the Moon are foreseen
and controlled by the majesty[65] of the Great Ruler; for here [_i.e._
at the Moon] the air is divided from the aether. Now when all aethereal
things had been set in order, yet [Sidenote: p. 356.] another Ruler
ascends from the Seed-Mass, greater than all the things which are below
him, save only the Sonhood which is left behind, but much inferior to
the first Ruler. And this one is called by them “able to be named.”[66]
And his place is called Hebdomad, and he is the controller and Demiurge
of all things lying below him, and he has created to himself from the
Seed-Mass a Son who is more foreseeing and wiser than he in the same
way as has been said about the first [Ruler]. And in this space,[67]
he says, are the heap and the Seed-Mass, and events naturally happen
as they were (ordained) to be produced in advance by Him who has
calculated that which will come to pass and when and what and how it
will be.[68] And of these there is no leader nor guardian nor demiurge.
For that calculation which the Non-Existent One made when he created
them suffices for them.
25. When, then, according to them, the whole cosmos and the hypercosmic
things were completed, and nothing [Sidenote: p. 357.] was lacking,
there still remained in the Seed-Mass the third Sonhood which had been
left behind to give and receive benefits in the Seed. And the Sonhood
left behind had to be revealed and again established on high above the
Boundary Spirit in the presence of the subtler Sonhood and the one that
resembles it and the Non-Existent One, as, says he, it is written, “All
creation groans and is in travail in expectation of the revelation of
the sons of God.”[69] We spiritual men, he say, left here below for the
arrangement and perfect formation and rectification and completion of
the souls which by nature have to remain in this [Middle] Space, are
the “sons [of God].” “Now from Adam to Moses sin reigned”[70] as it is
written. For the Great Ruler reigned who held sway up to the firmament,
thinking that he alone was God, and that there was nothing higher than
he. For all things were kept hidden in silence. This, says he, is the
mystery which was not known to the earlier generations; but in those
times the King and Lord, as it seemed to him, of the universals was
[Sidenote: p. 358.] the Great Ruler, the Ogdoad. Yet of this [Middle]
Space the Hebdomad was King and Lord, and the Ogdoad is ineffable but
the Hebdomad may be named. This Ruler of the Hebdomad, says he, it was
who spoke to Moses, saying, “I am the God of Abraham and Isaac and
Jacob and the name of God was not made known to them:”[71] for thus
they will have it to have been written--that is to say [the name] of
the Ineffable Ogdoad, Ruler, God. All the prophets therefore who were
before the Saviour, spoke from that place.[72] When then, he says, the
sons of God had to be revealed to us, about whom, he says, creation
groaned and travailed in expectation of the revelation, the Gospel came
into the cosmos and passed through every Dominion[73] and Authority and
Lordship and every name which is named. And it came indeed, although
nothing descended from on high, nor did the Blessed Sonhood come forth
from that Incomprehensible and Blessed God-who-was-Not. But as the
Indian naphtha, when only kindled from afar off, takes fire, so from
the Formlessness of the heap below do [Sidenote: p. 359.] the powers of
the Sonhood extend upward. For as if he were something of naphtha, the
son of the Great Ruler of the Ogdoad catches and receives the concepts
from the Blessed Sonhood which is beyond the Holy Spirit. For the
Power in the midst of the Holy Spirit in the Boundary of the Sonhood
distributes the rushing and flowing concepts to the Son of the Great
Ruler.[74]
26. Therefore the Gospel came first from the Sonhood, he says to the
Ruler, through his Son who sits beside him, and the Ruler learned that
he was not the God of the universals, but was a generated [being]
and had above him the outstretched Treasure-house of the Ineffable
and Unnameable God-who-was-Not and of the Sonhood.[75] And he was
astounded and terrified when he perceived in what ignorance he had
been, and this, says [Basilides] is the saying: “The fear of [the]
Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”[76] For he began to be wise when
instructed by the Christ seated beside him, and learned what was the
Non-Existent One, what the Sonhood, what the Holy Spirit, and what was
the constitution[77] of the universals and [Sidenote: p. 360.] how
these will be restored.[78] This is the wisdom spoken of in mystery,
as to which, says he, the Scripture declares: “Not in the words taught
by human wisdom, but in the teachings of [the] Spirit.”[79] Then, says
he, the Ruler when he had been instructed and made to fear, confessed
thoroughly the sin he had committed in magnifying himself. This, says
he, is the saying: “I acknowledge my sin and I know my transgression;
upon this I will make full confession for ever.”[80]
Now when the Great Ruler had been instructed, and every creature of
the Ogdoad had been taught and had learned, and the mystery had been
made known to those above the heavens, it was still necessary that
the Gospel should come to the Hebdomad also, so that the Ruler of the
Hebdomad might be instructed in like manner and be evangelized.[81] The
Son of the Great Ruler [therefore] enlightened the Son of the Ruler of
the Hebdomad, having caught the light which he had from the Sonhood
on high, and the Son of the Ruler of the Hebdomad was enlightened,
and the Gospel was announced to the Ruler of the Hebdomad, and he in
like manner as has been said was both terrified and made confession.
When then all things in the [Sidenote: p. 361.] Hebdomad had been
enlightened, and the Gospel had been announced to them--for according
to them, the creatures belonging to these spaces are boundless and are
Dominions and Powers and Authorities, concerning whom they have a very
long story told by many [authors]. [And] they imagine that there are
there 365 heavens, and Habrasax is their Great Ruler, because his name
comprises the cipher 365, wherefore the year consists of that number
of days[82]--but when, says he, these things had come to pass, it was
still necessary that our Formlessness should be enlightened and that
the mystery unknown to the earlier generations should be revealed to
the Sonhood left behind in the Formlessness as if he were an abortion.
As, says he, it is written: “By revelation was made known to me the
mystery;”[83] and again, “I heard unspeakable words which it is not
lawful for man to utter.”[84] [Thus] the light came down from the
[Sidenote: p. 362.] Hebdomad, which had come down from the Ogdoad on
high to the Son of the Hebdomad, upon Jesus the son of Mary, and He,
having caught it, was enlightened by the light shining upon Him.[85]
This, says he, is the saying:--“The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee,”
[that is], that which passed from the Sonhood through the Boundary
Spirit into the Ogdoad and Hebdomad down to Mary, “and the Power of
the Highest shall overshadow thee,”[86] [that is] the power of the
unction[87] from the Height of the Demiurge on high unto the creation
which is of the Son. But, he says, up till that [time] the cosmos was
thus constituted, until [the time] when the whole Sonhood left behind
in the Formlessness to benefit souls and [itself] to receive benefits
should be transformed and follow Jesus, and should go on high and
come forth purified, and should become most subtle as it might do by
ascension like the First [Sonhood]. For it possesses all the power of
attaching itself naturally to the light which shines downward from on
high.
27. When therefore, he says, every Sonhood shall have come [forth] and
shall be established above the Boundary [Sidenote: p. 363.] Spirit, the
creation shall then receive pity. For up till now, he says it wails and
is tortured and awaits the revelation of the sons of God, so that all
the men of the Sonhood shall ascend from this place. When this shall
have come to pass, he says, God shall bring upon the whole cosmos the
Great Ignorance, so that all things shall remain as they are by nature,
and none shall desire any of those things beyond [its] nature. For
all the souls of this space which possess a nature enabling them to
remain immortal in this [space] alone, will remain convinced that there
is nothing different from nor better than this [space]. Nor will any
tidings or knowledge of higher things abide in those below, so that the
lower souls shall not be tormented by yearning after the impossible,
as if a fish should desire to feed with the sheep on the hills. For,
says he, such a desire should it happen to them[88] would be [their]
destruction. Therefore, he says, all things which remain in their own
place are imperishable; but perishable if they wish to overleap and
rise above [the limits] of their nature. Thus the Ruler of the Hebdomad
will know nothing of the things above him. For the Great [Sidenote:
p. 364.] Ignorance will lay hold of him, so that grief and pain and
sighing will stand off from him, for he will neither desire anything
impossible nor will he grieve. And in like manner this Ignorance will
lay hold of the Great Ruler of the Ogdoad, and similarly all the
creatures subject to him, so that none of them shall grieve and mourn
for anything outside his own nature. And this shall be the Restoration
of all things established according to nature in the seed of the
universals at the beginning, but they shall be restored [each] in their
proper season. But [to prove] that everything has its proper season,
it is enough to mention the saying of the Saviour:--“Mine hour is not
yet come”[89] and the Magi observing the star. For, says [Basilides]
He himself was foretold by the nativity[90] of the stars and of the
return of the hours into the great heap. This is according to them, the
spiritual inner man conceived in the natural man--which is the Sonhood
who leaves the soul, not to die but to remain as it is by nature, just
as the first Sonhood[91] [Sidenote: p. 365.] left the Holy Spirit
which is the Boundary in its appropriate place and then did on his own
special soul.[92]
In order that we may omit nothing of their [doctrines], I will set
forth what they say also about (a) Gospel.[93] Gospel is according
to them the knowledge of hypercosmic things, as has been made plain,
which the Great Ruler[94] did not understand. When then there was
manifested to him what are the Holy Spirit that is the Boundary, and
the Sonhood and the God-who-is-Not the cause of all these, he rejoiced
at the words and exulted,[95] and this according to them is the Gospel.
But Jesus according to them was born as we have before said. And He
having come into being by the Birth before explained, all those things
likewise came to pass with regard to the Saviour as it is written in
the Gospels. And these things came to pass [Basilides] says, so that
Jesus might become the first-fruits of the sorting-out of the things
of the Confusion.[96] For when the Cosmos was divided into an Ogdoad
which is the head of the whole ordered world, [the head whereof is] the
Great Ruler, and into a Hebdomad which is the head of the Hebdomad, the
[Sidenote: p. 366.] Demiurge of the things below him, and into this
space of ours, which is the Formlessness, it was necessary that the
things of the Confusion should be sorted out by the discrimination of
Jesus.
That which was His bodily part[97] which was from the Formlessness,
therefore suffered[98] and returned to the Formlessness. And that which
was His psychic part which was from the Hebdomad also returned to the
Hebdomad. But that which was peculiar to the Height of the Great Ruler
ascended and remained with the Great Ruler. And He bore aloft as far
as the Boundary Spirit that which was from the Boundary Spirit and it
remained with the Boundary Spirit. But the third Sonhood which had
been left behind to give and receive benefits was purified by Him, and
traversing all these places went on high to the Blessed Sonhood.[99]
For this is the whole theory,[100] as it were a Confusion of the
Seed-Mass and the discrimination [into classes] and the Restoration of
the things confused into their proper places. Therefore Jesus became
the first-fruits of the discrimination, and the Passion came to pass
for no other reason than this discrimination.[101] For in this manner,
he says, all the Sonhood left behind in the Formlessness to [Sidenote:
p. 367.] give and receive benefits separated into its components in the
same way as [the person] of Jesus was separated. This is what Basilides
fables after having lingered in Egypt, and having learned from them [of
Egypt] such great wisdom, he brought forth such fruits.[102]
2. _Satornilus._[103]
28. And a certain Satornilus who flourished at the same time as
Basilides, but passed his life in Antioch of Syria, taught the same
things as Menander.[104] He says that one father exists unknown to all,
who made Angels, Archangels, Powers [and] Authorities. And that from a
certain seven angels the cosmos and all things therein came into being.
And that man was [the] creation of angels, there having [Sidenote:
p. 368.] appeared on high from the Absolute One[105] a shining image
which they could not detain, says Saturnilus, because of its immediate
return on high. [Wherefore] they exhorted one another, saying: “Let
us make man according to image and resemblance.”[106] Which, he says,
having come to pass, the image could not stand upright by reason of
the lack of power among the angels, but grovelled like a worm. Then
the Power on high having pity on it, because it had come into being
in his likeness, sent forth a spark of life which raised up the man
and made him live.[107] Therefore, says he, the spark of life returns
at death to its own kindred and the rest of [man’s] compound parts is
resolved into its original elements.[108] And he supposed the unknown
Father[109] to be unbegotten, bodiless, and formless. But he says that
He showed Himself as a phantom in human shape, and that the God of the
Jews is one of the angels. And, because the Father wished to depose
all the angels, Christ came for the putting-down of the God of the
Jews and for the salvation of those who believe on him; and that these
[believers] [Sidenote: p. 369.] have the spark of life within them.
For he says that two races of men were formed by the angels, one bad
and one good. And that since the demons help the bad, the Saviour came
for the destruction of the bad men and demons, but for the salvation
of the good. And he says that to marry and beget [children] is from
Satan. Many of this man’s adherents abstain from things that have had
life, through this pretended abstinence (leading astray many).[110] And
they say that the Prophecies were uttered, some by the world-creators,
some by Satan whom he supposes to be an angel who works against the
world-creators and especially (against) the God of the Jews.[111] Thus
then Satornilus.
3. _Concerning Marcion._[112]
[Sidenote: p. 370.] 29. Marcion of Pontus, much madder than these,
passing over many opinions of the majority and pressing on to the more
shameless, supposed that there were two principles of the All,[113] one
good and the other bad. And he, thinking that he was bringing in some
new [doctrine], manufactured a school filled with folly and of Cynic
life, being himself a lewd one.[114] He thought that the multitude
would not notice that he chanced to be a disciple not of Christ, but of
Empedocles, who was very much earlier, and he laid down and taught that
there were two causes of the All, [_i. e._] Strife and Love.[115] For
what says Empedocles on the conduct of the cosmos? If we have said it
before,[116] yet I will not now keep silence, if only for the sake of
comparing [Sidenote: p. 371.] the heresy of this plagiarist[117] [with
the source]. He says that all the elements of which the cosmos was
compounded and consists are six, to wit:--two material, [viz.] Air and
Water; two instruments, whereby the material elements are arranged[118]
and changed about, [viz.] Fire and Air; and two which work with the
instruments and fashion matter, [viz.] Strife and Love. He says
something like this:--
Hear first the four roots of all things:
Shining Zeus and life-bearing Here and Aïdoneus.
And Nestis who wets with tears the source of mortals.[119]
Zeus is fire and life-bearing Here the earth which bears fruits for
the support of life. But Aïdoneus is the air, because while beholding
all things through it, it alone we do not see. And Nestis is water,
since it is the only vehicle of food, and therefore the becoming cause
of all growing things,[120] yet cannot nourish them by itself. For
if it could so give nourishment, he says, living things[121] could
never die of hunger, for there is always abundance of water in the
cosmos.[122] Whence he calls water Nestis, because it is a becoming
cause of nourishment, yet cannot itself nourish growing things. These
things then are, to sum them up in outline, those which comprise the
foundation[123] of the cosmos [_i. e._] water and Earth from which all
things come, [Sidenote: p. 372.] Fire and Spirit[124] the tools and
agents, and Strife and Love which fashion all things with skill. And
Love is a certain peace and even mindedness and natural affection,[125]
which determines that the cosmos shall be perfect and complete; but
Strife ever rends asunder that which is one and divides it and makes
many things out of one. Therefore the cause of the whole creation is
Strife, which [cause] he calls baneful, that is deadly.[126] For it
takes care that through every aeon, its creation persists. And Strife
the deadly is the Demiurge and maker of all things which have come into
being by birth; but Love, of their leading-forth from the cosmos and
transformation and return to unity.[127] Concerning which, Empedocles
[says] that there are two immortal and unbegotten things which have
never yet had a source of existence. He speaks, however, somehow like
this:--
For it was aforetime and will be; never, I ween,
Will the unquenchable aeon lack these two.[128]
[Sidenote: p. 373.] But what are these two? Strife and Love. For they
had no source of existence, but pre-existed and ever were, being
through their unbegotten nature incorruptible. But Fire [and Water] and
Earth and Air die and again come to life. For when the things which
have come into being through Strife die, Love takes them and leads them
and adds and attaches them to the All,[129] so that the All may remain
_One_, being ever marshalled by Love in one fashion and form. Yet when
Love creates the One from many things, and arranges the things which
have been scattered in the One, Strife again rends them away from the
One, and makes them [into] many, that is, Fire, Water, Earth [and] Air,
whence are produced animals and plants and whatever parts of the cosmos
we perceive. And concerning the form[130] of the cosmos as ordered by
Love, he speaks somehow like this:--
For not from the back do two arms[131] spring
[Sidenote: p. 374.] Nor feet nor active knees, nor hairy genitals.
But it was a sphere and everywhere alike.[132]
Such things [does] Love, and turns out the most beautiful form of the
world as One from many; but Strife rends gradually from that One the
principle of its arrangement, and again makes it [into] many. This is
what Empedocles says of his own birth:--
Of whom I also am now a fugitive and an exile from the gods.[133]
That is, he calls the One divine, and says that the unity formerly
existing in the One was rent asunder by Strife and came into being in
these many things, existing according to Strife’s ordering. For, says
he, Strife is the furious and troublous and unresting Demiurge of this
cosmos, whose [Sidenote: p. 375.] [fashioner] Empedocles calls it. For
this is the judgment and compulsion of the souls which Strife rends
away from the One and fashions and works up, which process [Empedocles]
describes somehow like this:--
Who having sinned swore falsely
And demons are allotted long-drawn out life.[134]
calling the long-lived souls “demons” because they are immortal and
live through long ages.
For three myriad seasons they wandered from the blessed,[135]
calling “blessed” those whom Love has made from the many into the
oneness of the intelligible[136] cosmos. Therefore, says [Empedocles]
they wandered
Putting on in time all mortal forms[137]
[Sidenote: p. 376.]Interchanging the hard ways of life.[138]
He says that the transmigrations and transmutations of the souls into
bodies are “hard ways.” This is what he says:--
Interchanging the hard ways of life.
For [the souls pass from body to body] being changed about and punished
by Strife and are not allowed to remain in the One, but are punished in
all punishments by Strife. This is what he says:--
For aetherial might drives souls seawards.
And sea spits them upon Earth’s surface; and Earth into the beams
Of the radiant Sun, and he casts them into the whirls of aether
Each takes them from the other, but all hate them.[139]
[Sidenote: p. 377.] This is the punishment wherewith the Demiurge
punishes, just as a smith forging iron, taking it from the fire, dips
it in water. For Fire is the aether, whence the Demiurge casts the
souls into the Sea; and the Earth is the ground. Whence he says, from
water to Earth, from Earth to Air. This is what he says:--
into the beams
Of the radiant Sun, and he casts them into the whirls of aether
Each takes them from the other, but all hate them.
Therefore, according to Empedocles, Love gathers the hated and tortured
and punished souls together into this world. For [Love] is good and
has pity on their wailing and the disorder and wickedness created by
furious Strife. And she hastens and toils to lead them forth quickly
out of the world and to settle them in the One, so that all things
brought together by her may come to oneness. It [Sidenote: p. 378.] is
then by reason of this arrangement of this much-divided[140] world by
deadly Strife, that Empedocles exhorts his disciples to abstain from
all things which have life. For he says that the bodies of animals
which are eaten are the dwellings of punished souls, and he teaches
those who hear such [his] words to refrain[141] from companying with
women, so that they may not cooperate and help in the deeds which
Strife effects, ever undoing and rending asunder the work of Love.
Empedocles says that this is the greatest law of the government of the
All, speaking somehow thus:--
There is a thing of Necessity, an ancient decree of the gods.
Eternal and sealed with broad oaths.[142]
thus calling Necessity the change by Strife of the One into many and
that by Love of many into the One. He says, indeed, that there are four
mortal gods, Fire, Water, Earth and Air; and two immortal unbegotten
and enemies one to the other for ever [viz.] Strife and Love; and that
Strife is ever unjust and grasping and rends asunder what belongs
[Sidenote: p. 379.] to Love and takes it to itself; and that Love is
ever good and anxious for unity and calls back to herself and leads
and makes one the things rent asunder from the All and tortured and
punished in creation by the Demiurge. In some such way does Empedocles
philosophize for us on the genesis of the Cosmos and its destruction
and its constitution established from good and evil.
And he says that there is a certain conceivable[143] third power which
may be conceived[144] from these, speaking somehow like this:--
For if having fixed these things with knowing mind[145]
You behold them favourably with pure attention
They all will be present with you throughout the age
But many others will come forth from these. For they will increase
Each into a habit as is the nature of each.[146]
And if you desire such other things as are among men
A myriad woes arise and dull the edge of care
[Sidenote: p. 380.] Take heed lest they leave you suddenly as time rolls on.
Yearning to join their own beloved race
For know that all things have perception and an allotted share of mind.[147]
30. When therefore Marcion or any of his dogs shall bay against the
Demiurge, bringing forward arguments from the comparison of good and
evil, they should be told that neither the Apostle Paul nor Mark of
the maimed finger[148] reported these things. For none of them is
written in the Gospel [according] to Mark; [and] Marcion, having stolen
them from Empedocles of Agrigentum, the son of Meto, thought until
now to conceal the fact that he had taken the whole arrangement of
his heresy from Sicily, [after] having transferred the actual words
of Empedocles to the Gospel discourses. For now, O Marcion, since you
have [Sidenote: p. 381.] made antithesis[149] of good and evil, I also
to-day, following up the teachings you have secretly borrowed[150] set
them over against [the originals]. Thou sayest that the Demiurge of the
cosmos is wicked.[151] Dost thou not then feel shame in teaching to the
Church the words of Empedocles? Thou sayest that there is a good God
who destroys the creations of the Demiurge. Dost thou not then clearly
preach as good news[152] to thy hearers the good Love of Empedocles?
Thou dost forbid marriage and the begetting of children and [dost order
thy hearers] to abstain from the meats which God has created for the
participation of the faithful and of those who know the truth,[153]
having purposely forgotten that thou art teaching the purifications of
Empedocles. For, following him as you truly do throughout, you teach
your own disciples[154] to avoid meats, lest they should eat some
body covering a soul punished by the Demiurge. You dissolve marriages
joined by God, [thus] following the teachings of Empedocles so that you
may preserve the work of Love undissevered. For marriage according to
Empedocles dissevers the One and creates many as we have shown.[155]
[Sidenote: p. 382.] 31. The earliest and least altered[156] heresy of
Marcion, comprising the mingling of good and evil, has been shown by us
to be that of Empedocles. But since in our own time, a certain Prepon
the Assyrian,[157] a Marcionite, in a book addressed to Bardesianes the
Armenian, has undertaken discourses on this heresy, I will not keep
silence about this either. Considering that there is a third principle,
just and set between good and evil, Prepon also does not thus succeed
in escaping the teaching of Empedocles. For Empedocles says that the
cosmos is governed by wicked Strife, and the other conceivable [world]
by Love, while between the two opposed[158] principles is a just Logos,
by whom the things severed by Strife are brought together and are
attached by Love to the One. But this same just Logos, [Sidenote: p.
383.] who fights on the side of Love, Empedocles proclaims as a Muse
and invokes her to fight on his side, speaking somehow thus:--
If for creatures of a day, O deathless Muse,
Thou art pleased to relieve our cares by thought,
Be propitious once more to my prayer, Calliope!
For I show forth a pious discourse of [the] blessed gods.[159]
Following this up, Marcion repudiates altogether our Saviour’s Birth,
thinking it out of the question that a creature[160] of destructive
Strife should become the Logos fighting on the side of Love, that is
of the Good. But he said that without birth, in the 15th year of the
reign of Tiberius Cæsar, He came down from on high to teach in the
synagogues, being between evil and good. For if He is [Sidenote: p.
384.] a Mediator,[161] he says, He is freed from all nature of evil,
for evil, as he says, is the Demiurge and all his works. But He was
freed also, he says, from the nature of good, so that He might be a
Mediator, as Paul says,[162] which he himself confessed [in the saying]
“Why callest thou me good? there is one Good.”
These then are Marcion’s doctrines, whereby he has caused many to
err by making use of the words of Empedocles and transferring the
philosophy stolen from that person to his own teaching. [Thus] he
has compounded a godless heresy which I think has been sufficiently
refuted by us. Nor [do we think] that we have omitted anything of
those who, having stolen [opinions] from the Greeks, insolently
oppose the disciples of Christ, as if these last had become their
teachers of these things. But since it seems to us that the opinions
of this [Marcion] have been sufficiently exposed,[163] let us see what
Carpocrates says.
[Sidenote: p. 385.] 4. _Carpocrates._[164]
32. Carpocrates says that the cosmos and the things which are therein,
came into being by angels much below the unbegotten Father, but that
Jesus was begotten by Joseph and was born like other men, though more
just than the rest. And that His soul having been born strong and pure
remembered what it had seen in the sphere of the unbegotten God;[165]
and that therefore a power was sent down to it from that [Deity], so
that by its means it might escape from the world-making angels. And
that this [soul][166] having passed through them all and having been
freed from them went on high to the presence of the unbegotten Father,
and so will the souls[167] [go] who cleave to similar things. And
they say that the soul of Jesus, although lawfully trained in Jewish
customs, disdained them and therefore received the powers whereby
He made of none effect[168] the passions attached to men for their
punishment. [Sidenote: p. 386.] And that therefore the soul which like
that of Christ can disdain the world-making rulers, receives in the
same way power to do like things. Whence also they reach such [a pitch
of] vanity as to say they are like unto Jesus, and even that they are
mightier than man, and some of them more excellent than His disciples,
such as Peter and Paul and the rest of the Apostles, and that they are
in nothing behind Jesus. But that their souls having come from the
Transcendent Authority[169] and therefore similarly disdaining the
world-makers, are worthy of the same power [as He] and will go to the
same place. But that if anyone should disdain more than He the things
below, he might become more excellent than He.
[Sidenote: p. 387.] They practise, then, magic arts, and incantations
and [use] philtres and love-feasts, and familiar spirits and
dream-senders and other evil works, thinking that they already have
authority to lord it over the rulers and makers of this world, nay even
over all created in it. Who have themselves been sent forth by Satan
for the dishonour[170] of the divine name of the Church before the
Gentiles, so that men hearing in one way or another of their doctrines
and thinking that we are all even as they, may turn away their ears
from the preaching of the Truth, [or] beholding their deeds, may speak
evil of us all.
And they consider that [their] souls will change their bodies until
they have fulfilled all their transgressions; but that when nothing
is left undone, they will be set free to depart to the presence of
the God who is above the world-making angels, and that thus all souls
will be saved. But if any anticipating matters should combine all
transgressions [Sidenote: p. 388.] in one advent,[171] they will no
longer change their bodies, but as having paid all penalties at once,
will be freed from further birth in a body. Some of them also brand
their disciples in the back part of the lobe of the right ear. And they
make [172] images of Christ saying that they were made [in the time] of
Pilate.[173]
5. _Cerinthus._[174]
33. But a certain Cerinthus, having been trained in the schooling of
the Egyptians, said that the cosmos did not come into being by the
First God, but by a certain Power derived from the Authority set over
the universals, which is yet ignorant of the God who is over all. And
he supposed Jesus not to have been begotten from a virgin, but to have
been born the son of Joseph and Mary like all other men, [Sidenote:
p. 389.] and to have been more wise and just than they. And that, at
the Baptism, the Christ in the form of a dove descended upon Him from
the Absolute Power[175] which is over the universals. And that then He
announced[176] the unknown Father and perfected His own powers; but
that in the end the Christ stood away from Jesus, and Jesus suffered
and rose again;[177] but that the Christ being spiritual remained
impassible.
6. _Ebionæi._[178]
34. But the Ebionæi admit that the cosmos came into being by the
God who is; and concerning Christ they invent[179] the same things
as Cerinthus and Carpocrates. They live according to Jewish customs,
thinking that they will be justified by the Law and saying that Jesus
was justified in practising[180] the Law. Wherefore He was named by God
Christ and Jesus, since none of them has fulfilled [Sidenote: p. 390.]
the Law. For if any other had practised the commandments which are in
the Law, he would be the Christ. And they say it is possible for them
if they do likewise to become Christs; and that He was a man like unto
all [men].
7. _Theodotus the Byzantian._[181]
35. But a certain Byzantine named Theodotus brought in a new heresy,
asserting things about the beginning of the All which partly agree with
[the account of] the True Church, since he admits that all things came
into being by God. But having taken[182] his [idea of] Christ from the
school of the Gnostics and from Cerinthus and Ebion,[183] he considers
He appeared in some such fashion as this:--Jesus was a man begotten
from a virgin according to the Father’s will, living the common life of
all men. And having become most pious,[184] He at length on His baptism
in Jordan received the Christ from on high, who descended in the
[Sidenote: p. 391.] form of a dove. Wherefore the powers within Him did
not become active, until the Spirit which came down was manifested in
Him, which [Spirit] declared Him to be the Christ. But some will have
it that He did not become God on the descent of the Spirit; and others
that [this took place] on His resurrection from the dead.
8. _Another Theodotus._
36. But while different enquiries were taking place among them[185] a
certain man who was also called Theodotus, a money-changer by trade,
undertook to say that a certain Melchizedek was the greatest power, and
that he was greater than Christ. After the image of whom they allege
that Christ happened [to come]. And they like the Theodotians before
mentioned say that Jesus was a man, and in the same words [declare]
that the Christ descended upon Him.
[Sidenote: p. 392.] But the opinions[186] of Gnostics are varied,
and we do not deem it worth while to recount in detail their foolish
doctrines, composed of much absurdity and charged with blasphemy,
the most respectable of which those Greeks who philosophized on the
Divine have refuted. But one cause of the great conspiracy of these
wicked ones was Nicolaus, one of the seven appointed to the diaconate
by the Apostles.[187] He, having fallen away from the right doctrine,
taught that it was indifferent how men lived and ate: whose disciples
having waxed insolent, the Holy Spirit exposed in the Apocalypse as
fornicators and eaters of things offered to idols.[188]
9. _Cerdo and Lucian._[189]
37. But a certain Cerdo taking in like manner his starting-point from
these [heretics] and from Simon, says that the [Sidenote: p. 393.]
God announced by Moses and [the] Prophets was not the Father of Jesus
Christ. For that this God was known, but the Father of the Christ
unknowable; and that the first-named was [only] just, but the other,
good. The doctrine of this [Cerdo] Marcion confirmed when he took in
hand the _Antitheses_[190] and everything which seemed to him to speak
against the Demiurge of all things. And so did Lucian his disciple.
10. _Apelles._[191]
38. Now Apelles who [sprang] from among these men, says thus:--There is
a certain good God as Marcion supposed; but he who created all things
is [only] just; and there is a third [God] who spoke to Moses, and
yet a fourth, a cause of evil. And he names these angels and speaks
ill of the Law and the Prophets, deeming the Scriptures of human
authorship and false. And he picks out of the Gospels and Epistles
the things favourable to him. Yet he clings to the discourses of a
certain Philumena as the manifestations[192] [Sidenote: p. 394.] of a
prophetess. And he says that the Christ came down from the powers on
high, _i. e._ from the Good One and was the son of that One, and was
not begotten from a virgin, nor did He appear bodiless;[193] but that
taking parts from every substance[194] of the All, He made a body, that
is from hot and cold and wet and dry. And that in this body He lived
unnoticed by the cosmic authorities during the time that He spent in
the cosmos. And moreover that having been crucified[195] by the Jews
He died, and after three days rose again and appeared to the disciples
showing the marks of the nails and [the wound] in his side, and thereby
convinced them that He existed and was not a phantom but was incarnate.
The flesh [Apelles] says, which He showed, He gave back to the earth
whence was its substance, and He desired nothing of others, but merely
used [the flesh] for a season. He gave back to each its own, having
loosed again the bond of the body, _i. e._ the hot to the hot, the cold
to the cold, the wet to the wet and the dry to the dry,[196] and thus
passed to the presence of the good Father, leaving the seed of life to
the world to those who believe through the disciples.[197]
[Sidenote: p. 395.] 39. It seems to us that we have set forth
sufficiently these things also. But since we have decided to leave
unrefuted no doctrines taught by any [heretic], let us see what has
been excogitated by the Docetae.
FOOTNOTES
[Footnote 1: Of the Basilides with whose doctrines this book opens,
little is known. While some would on slender grounds make him a
Syrian, there is no doubt that he taught in Egypt and especially in
Alexandria, where he seems to have steeped himself in Greek philosophy.
This must have been during the reign of Hadrian and some time before
the appearance of the far greater heresiarch Valentinus. If we could
believe the testimony of Epiphanius, Basilides was a fellow-disciple
with Satornilus, to be presently mentioned, of Menander, the immediate
successor of Simon Magus; and, according to the more trustworthy
witness of Clement of Alexandria (_Strom._, VII, 17), he himself
claimed to be the disciple of Glaucias, “the interpreter” of St. Peter.
He had a son Isidore who shared his teaching, and he wrote a treatise
in twenty-four books on the Gospels which he called _Exegetica_. The
sect that he founded, although never popular, lingered for some time
in Egypt; but there is much probability in Matter’s conjecture (_Hist.
crit. du Gnost._, 2nd ed., III, 36), that most of his followers became
the hearers of Valentinus.
Our author’s account of Basilides’ doctrine at first sight differs
so widely from that given by Irenæus and his copyists that it was
for long supposed that the two accounts were irreconcilable. The
late Prof. Hort, however, in his lucid article on the subject in the
_Dictionary of Christian Biography_ showed with much skill that this
was not so, and that the Basilidian doctrine contained in our text is
in all probability that of the _Exegetica_ itself, while the teaching
attributed to Basilides by Irenæus and others was the same doctrine
largely corrupted by the inconsistent and incoherent superstitions
which invariably attach themselves to any faith propagated in secret.
The immediate source of Basilides’ own teaching cannot, up to the
present time, be satisfactorily traced; but, although its coping-stone,
the non-existent Deity, shows some likeness to the Buddhistic ideas
which were at any rate known in the Alexandria of his time (Clem.
Alex., _Strom._, I, 15), it is probable that among the relics of
the ancient Egyptian religion, then almost extinct, something of
the same idea might have been found. His obligation to the Stoic
philosophy is well brought out by Hort; and he was doubtless versed
in the dialectical methods of Aristotle, which, then as later, formed
the universal equipment of the student of philosophy. Hippolytus’
theory that the ground-work of the Basilidian edifice is a conscious
or unconscious borrowing from Aristotle derives no support from any
Aristotelian writings known to us. Unlike other Gnostics, Basilides
displays no animus towards the Jews beyond reducing their Deity to
the Ruler of the Hebdomad, or lowest spiritual world, and he accepts
as fully as possible the Divinity of Jesus and the authority of the
New Testament. Of the Docetism attributed to him by Irenæus and
others, there is here no trace, and the Bishop of Lyons’ statement on
this point can only be explained by supposing that he here confused
Basilides with some other heresiarch.
The distinctive features of Basilides’ teaching as disclosed in our
text are, however, plain enough. Rejecting all idea of a pre-existing
matter, he derives everything from the Supreme Being, whom he considers
to be so unspeakably and inconceivably great that he will not even
say of Him that He exists. He it is who from the first decreed not
only the foundation of the universe but also the means and agency by
which this is to be brought about. Nor do the apparent defects in its
constitution involve in Basilides’ system any thwarting of the Divine
Will by intermediate agents, or any lapse from duty on their part. All
things subsequent to the Supreme Being are in effect His children, and
from the Panspermia or Seed-Mass originally let fall by Him emerges the
First Sonhood, or purest part of the Sonhood, which, rising from the
heap by its own lightness and tenuity, springs upward into the presence
of the First Cause, where it remains for the purpose of giving light
when needed to the lower parts of creation. This is quickly followed
by the Second Sonhood (or Second Part of the Sonhood), which, emerging
in like manner, rises not from its own unaided power, but with the
assistance of the Boundary Spirit, who must have its origin in the
Seed-Mass, and who is left as the Boundary between the visible and the
invisible part of the universe when the Second Sonhood passes to the
Ogdoad or Eighth Heaven. This Eighth Heaven is under the sway of the
Great Ruler, a functionary emitted by the Seed-Mass for the purpose of
governing this abode of perfection, from which it may be inferred that
the Second Sonhood like the First ultimately returns to the presence of
the Supreme Being. In his organization of this Eighth Heaven, the Great
Ruler is much helped by the Son whom he calls forth from the Seed-Mass,
who is expressly stated to be greater and wiser than his own Father.
There remains in the Seed-Mass two other world-creating powers. The
first of these is the maker of the Seven Heavens or Hebdomad, which
can here hardly be the planets, because they are expressly said to
be sublunary. He, too, produces from the Seed-Mass a Son greater and
wiser than himself, who again, it may be supposed, assists his father
in the organization of this Hebdomad. What form this organization took
we are not told, although there is some talk of 365 beings who are all
“Dominions and Powers and Authorities” with a ruler called Habrasax.
Below this Hebdomad, however, comes this world of ours called the
“Formlessness,” which has, it is said, “no leader nor guardian nor
demiurge” (_i.e._ architect), everything happening in it as decreed
by the Supreme Being from the first. Yet this Formlessness contains
within it the Third Sonhood (or third part of the Sonhood) whose
mission is apparently to guide the souls of men to the place for which
they are predestined, which it does by imparting to them some of its
own nature. Then, when the time came for the Coming of the Saviour,
a light shining from the highest heavens was transmitted through the
intermediate places to the Son of the Hebdomad and fell upon “Jesus
the son of Mary,” and He after the Passion ascended like the two first
parts of the Sonhood to the Divine Presence. In due time the third part
of the Sonhood will, it is said, follow Him. When this happens, the
soul predestined to the Seven Heavens will pass thither, those more
enlightened will be admitted to the Eighth Heaven, and those entitled
to the most glorious destiny of all will probably ascend with the third
part of the Sonhood to the Highest. On the two inferior classes, there
will then fall the “Great Ignorance,” a merciful oblivion which will
prevent them from remembering or otherwise being troubled in their
beatitude by the knowledge of the still better things above them.
How the salvation of these souls is to be effected there is no
indication in Hippolytus, and he leaves us in entire doubt as to
whether Basilides allowed any free-will to man in the matter. It is
probable that he taught the doctrine of transmigration as a means of
purification from sins or faults committed in ignorance. But it is
several times asserted that he looked on suffering as a cleansing
process for the soul, and that he did not admit the existence of
evil (see Hort’s article on Basilides in _D.C.B._, I, pp. 274, 275
for references). About some of his teaching there was deliberate
concealment (_ibid._, p. 279), and Irenæus (I, xxiv. 6), tells us that
his followers were taught to declare that while they were “no longer
Jews” they were “not yet” (or perhaps “more than”) Christians. In
this we may perhaps see the influence of the rubrics of the Egyptian
_Book of the Dead_, and the beginning of that secret propagation of
religion which was to find its ripest fruit in Manichæism. For the
rest, although Irenæus (I, xxiv. 5) tells us that Basilides, like
Simon, Valentinus, and other Gnostics, taught that the body of Jesus
was a phantasm, and even that Simon of Cyrene had been crucified in His
stead, there appears no trace of this in our text, and it is possible
that the Bishop of Lyons is here again confusing Basilides’ doctrines
with those of his successors.]
[Footnote 2: ὄρος, “hill”; possibly a copyist’s error for ὅρος,
“boundary” or “shore.”]
[Footnote 3: This exordium was evidently intended to be spoken.]
[Footnote 4: οὐσία, Cruice and others translate this by “substance.”
Here it evidently means “essence” in the sense of “being.”]
[Footnote 5: εἶδος, _i.e._ appearance = that which is seen.]
[Footnote 6: ἄτομος, “which cannot be cut or divided,” = “atom.”]
[Footnote 7: ἀναδέξασθαι τομήν, “receive cutting.”]
[Footnote 8: ζῷον ἁπλῶς. See Aristotle, _Categor._, c. 3. The “living
creature” of the A. V. would here make better sense; but I keep the
word “animal” in the text out of respect for my predecessors.]
[Footnote 9: ὑπόστασις, literally _substantia_, with no meaning as has
οὐσία of “being.” See Hatch, _Hibbert Lectures_, p. 275.]
[Footnote 10: ἀνείδεον, “abstract,” or “non-specific”?]
[Footnote 11: εἴδεσιν.]
[Footnote 12: The text has ταύτην .... [τὴν οὐσίαν], the words in
brackets being rightly deleted, as Cruice notes.]
[Footnote 13: ἐθέμεθα, “posited.”]
[Footnote 14: εἰς εἶδος οὐσίας ὑποστατικῆς, which shows the distinction
made by the author between ὀυσία and ὑπόστασις.]
[Footnote 15: ἄτομον, “undivided.”]
[Footnote 16: The text is here corrupt and has to be restored from
Aristotle’s, the word I have translated “essence” being as before
οὐσία while subject is ὑποκειμένον. Cf. Aristotle _Cat._, c. 5, and
_Metaphysica_, IV, c. 8.]
[Footnote 17: Or “of many animals although they differ in species.”]
[Footnote 18: ἔμψυχος, “animated” or “ensouled.”]
[Footnote 19: ἕκαστον [sic]. _One_ of the accidents would make better
sense. Cf. vol. I, p. 56 _supra_.]
[Footnote 20: _i.e._ “inherent.”]
[Footnote 21: τὰ ἄτομα.]
[Footnote 22: συμπληροῦται.]
[Footnote 23: οὐσία, which here as elsewhere in the text may be
translated “essence.” “Being,” perhaps, is better here as more familiar
to the English reader.]
[Footnote 24: These definitions of “accident” and the like are not to
be found in the _Categories_ of Aristotle as we have them in the work
known as the _Organon_, nor in any other of his extant works. But they
correspond with those given in Book VI, and are there attributed to
Pythagoras. Cf. p. 21 _supra_.]
[Footnote 25: οὐσία throughout.]
[Footnote 26: That is, makes fables or myths about the gods.]
[Footnote 27: Macmahon remarks that these must be among Aristotle’s
lost works. This is doubtful.]
[Footnote 28: ἀποκρύφους. Is Matthias a corruption of Glaucias? See n.
on p. 59 _supra_.]
[Footnote 29: Basilides and his son must therefore have been
contemporaries of the Apostles. Even if we treat the word αὐτοῖς here
as a copyist’s interpolation, it is evident that Basilides must have
been considerably anterior in time to Valentinus.]
[Footnote 30: πραγμάτων, “transactions.”]
[Footnote 31: The words in this sentence in square brackets are
emendations in the text made by different editors.]
[Footnote 32: πραγμάτων, as in last note but one.]
[Footnote 33: κατὰ πλάτος καὶ διαίρεσιν.]
[Footnote 34: Basilides is thus the first Gnostic to teach the doctrine
of creation _e nihilo_.]
[Footnote 35: ὑποστήσας. Cf. the legend of Cybele, Vol. I, p. 118, n. 1
_supra_.]
[Footnote 36: πανσπερμίαν. The word is found in the fragments of
Anaxagoras and Democritus as well as in Plato. Its use has been revived
by Darwin and Weissmann.]
[Footnote 37: ἰδέας.]
[Footnote 38: οὐσιῶν. Nothing is here got by translating the word
“substances.”]
[Footnote 39: πολυούσιον. Galen uses it as equivalent to “very
wealthy.”]
[Footnote 40: ὁποῖον. As in Aristotle, _Cate._, c. 5.]
[Footnote 41: This with Hippolytus’ interpolated remark emphasizes the
great difference between Basilides’ doctrine with its assertion of the
creation _e nihilo_ and the emanation theory of all other Gnostics. It
does away with the necessity for a pre-existent matter.]
[Footnote 42: Gen. 1. 3.]
[Footnote 43: John 1. 9. This and “Mine hour is not yet come” are the
only undoubted references to the Fourth Gospel made by Basilides.]
[Footnote 44: ἀρχάς.]
[Footnote 45: ὁμοούσιος. The first occurrence, so far as it can be
traced, of this too-famous word. If I am right, the interpretation of
οὐσία by “substance” came later. The nature of the Sonhood (Υἱότης,
Lat., _filietas_, which I translate “Sonhood” by analogy with
_paternitas_ = Fatherhood) is peculiar to Basilides, the idea being
apparently that within the Panspermia was concealed a germ which was
more closely related to its Divine Parent than the rest. The same idea
_mutatis mutandis_ reappears in Weissmann’s theory of the germ-plasm.]
[Footnote 46: Homer, _Odyssey_, VII, 36.]
[Footnote 47: δι’ ὑπερβολὴν κάλλους καὶ ὡραιότητος. The longing of
all nature for something higher is also mentioned in the Book on the
Ophites (See Book V, Vol. I, pp. 123, 140 _supra_). The phrase was
evidently a favourite one with Hippolytus, and he therefore uses it in
regard to several heresies, as he has done with the magnet simile.]
[Footnote 48: μιμητική τις οὖσα, “being an imitative thing.”]
[Footnote 49: Plato, _Phaedrus_, cc. 55, 56.]
[Footnote 50: ὁμοούσιον.]
[Footnote 51: χαρακτηρισθῆναι.]
[Footnote 52: Ps. cxxxiii. 2.]
[Footnote 53: ἀμορφίας καὶ τοῦ διαστήματος τοῦ καθ’ ἡμᾶς. The ἀμορφία
corresponds exactly to the Chaos of the other Gnostics, as contrasted
with the Cosmos or ordered world which in this case is above it. In
it, as we see later (p. 356 Cr.) there is neither “leader nor guardian
nor demiurge,” and everything happens by predestination. The διάστημα
we have already met with in the teaching of Simon Magus (p. 261
Cr.). Although in classical Greek it means an “interval,” it is here
evidently intended to signify something uncultivated, or, as we should
say, a “waste.”]
[Footnote 54: It gives benefit by passing into the souls of certain
chosen men and thus enabling them to obtain the highest beatitude. It
receives it by thus purifying itself and so working out in turn its own
salvation.]
[Footnote 55: He evidently regards the three persons of the Sonhood as
one being.]
[Footnote 56: “Cosmos.”]
[Footnote 57: Τὸ Μεθόριον Πνεῦμα.]
[Footnote 58: The likeness of this to the Egyptian Horus who was at
once the sky-god and the ruler of the sublunary world, whose earthly
representative was the Pharaoh, is manifest. So, too, is its connection
with Horos, the Limit, of the Pleroma in Book VI.]
[Footnote 59: So in the _Pistis Sophia_ the great ruler of the material
world is only spoken of as the Great Propatôr or Forefather, but his
personal name is never mentioned. The word Ἄρχων here applied to this
power is never used by later Gnostics except in a bad sense.]
[Footnote 60: δεσπότης = autocrat or ruler having unlimited power.]
[Footnote 61: καθ’ ἕκαστα.]
[Footnote 62: This idea of a Power bringing into being a son greater
than himself seems peculiar to Basilides among Gnostic teachers. Its
origin may, perhaps, be sought among Pagan religions like the Greek
worship of Isis. See _Forerunners_, I, p. 63.]
[Footnote 63: This ἐντελεχεία or Quintessence Aristotle defines
(_Metaphys._, X, 9, 2) as actuality or the property of a thing _in
posse_ which lends to its motion or activity _in esse_.]
[Footnote 64: ἀποτέλεσμα. The word is much used in astrology.]
[Footnote 65: μεγαλειότητος. The word is post-classical and used in its
modern sense as an epithet of the Emperor in Byzantine times. Cf. LXX,
Jer. xxxiii. 9; Luke ix. 43; Acts xix. 27.]
[Footnote 66: ῥητός as opposed to ἄρῥητος, “ineffable.”]
[Footnote 67: That is to say, our world.]
[Footnote 68: ὡς φθάσαντα τεχθῆναι ὑπὸ τοῦ τὰ μέλλοντα γενέσθαι ὁτε δεῖ
καὶ οἷα δεῖ καὶ ὡς δεῖ λελογισμένου. The reading is very uncertain. Cf.
Cruice, p. 356 nn. 9, 10.]
[Footnote 69: Rom. viii. 22.]
[Footnote 70: Rom. v. 13, 14. In the Greek not ἁμαρτία as in the text,
but θάνατος, “death.”]
[Footnote 71: Cf. Exod. vi. 2, 3. Basilides has twisted the last
sentence, “By my name Jehovah was I not known to them,” as Hippolytus
notes.]
[Footnote 72: ἐκεῖθεν, _i. e._ from the Hebdomad. Cruice will have it
from the Ogdoad, but is clearly wrong.]
[Footnote 73: Ἀρχή, “Rule.” Cf. Milton’s “Thrones, Dominations,
Princedoms, Virtues, Powers.”]
[Footnote 74: The simile of the vapour of naphtha rising and catching
fire from a light above it is apt. As Prof. A. S. Peake points out
in his article on “Basilides” in Hastings’ _Dictionary of Religion
and Ethics_, Basilides throughout his system asserts in opposition to
Gnostics like Valentinus that salvation comes from the uplifting of the
lower powers rather than by the degradation of the higher.]
[Footnote 75: There are many conjectural readings of this passage, for
which see Cruice.]
[Footnote 76: Prov. i. 7. So Clem. Alex. (_Strom._, II, 8, 36), who
clearly quotes this passage from Basilides.]
[Footnote 77: κατασκευή. Cf. LXX, Gen. i. 1.]
[Footnote 78: ἀποκατασταθήσεται. This Apocatastasis, or return of the
worlds to the Deity from whom they came forth, is a favourite source of
speculation with all Gnostics.]
[Footnote 79: 1 Cor. ii. 13.]
[Footnote 80: A conflation of Ps. xxxii. 5, and Ps. li. 3.]
[Footnote 81: εὐαγγελισθήσεται, “have the good news announced to him”?]
[Footnote 82: It is the words in brackets which connect the system of
the text with that attributed to Basilides by Irenæus and Epiphanius.
Cf. Iren., I, xxiv. 5, pp. 202, 203, and n. 6, H., and Epiph., _Haer._,
XXIV.]
[Footnote 83: Eph. iii. 3, 5.]
[Footnote 84: 2 Cor. xii. 4.]
[Footnote 85: As at the Baptism in Jordan where, according to the
almost universal tradition, the water was lighted up.]
[Footnote 86: Luke i. 35.]
[Footnote 87: δύναμις τῆς χρίσεως. Thus in Cruice. Miller would read
κρίσεως, and Roeper Ὀγδοάδος. Perhaps the correct reading is χριστός,
according to the idea common to nearly all Gnostics that the Christos
only came upon Jesus at His Baptism.]
[Footnote 88: ἐγένετο ἄν.]
[Footnote 89: John iffi. 5.]
[Footnote 90: ὑπὸ γένεσιν, “configuration” or “geniture.” The proper
word for a theme or horoscope.]
[Footnote 91: It was the Second and not the First Sonhood who left the
Holy Spirit at the Boundary.]
[Footnote 92: It is plain from this that Basilides taught that the most
spiritual part of man’s soul was part of the Sonhood and that it was
separated from the rest at death. This is confirmed by what is said
later about what happened after the Passion.]
[Footnote 93: Εὐαγγέλιον = “good news”? The article is omitted in both
these sentences.]
[Footnote 94: He of the Ogdoad.]
[Footnote 95: ἠγαλλιάσατο, a kind of pun on Ἐὐαγγέλιον, “glad tidings.”]
[Footnote 96: ἵνα ἀπαρχὴ τῆς φυλοκρινήσεως γένηται τῶν συγκεχυμένων.
So Clem. Alex. (_Strom._, II., 8, 36), quoting from the “followers of
Basilides,” says that the Great Ruler’s fear became the ἀρχὴ τῆς σοφίας
φυλοκρινητικῆς, “the origin of the wisdom which discriminates.”]
[Footnote 97: σωματικὸν μέρος.]
[Footnote 98: This flatly contradicts the story attributed to Basilides
by Irenæus to the effect that Simon of Cyrene took His place on the
Cross. It has long been thought likely that Irenæus was here confusing
Basilides with his contemporary Saturninus.]
[Footnote 99: So in the _Pistis Sophia_, the incorporeal part of man is
said to consist of four parts.]
[Footnote 100: ὑπόθεσις.]
[Footnote 101: καὶ τὸ πάθος οὐκ ἄλλου τινὸς χάριν γέγονεν [ἢ] ὑπὲρ τοῦ
φυλοκρινηθῆναι τὰ συγκεχυμένα.]
[Footnote 102: As has been said, there appears no reason to doubt that
Hippolytus took his account of Basilides’ doctrines directly from the
works of that heresiarch or of his son Isidore. The likeness of the
quotations from Basilides or “those about Basilides” in Clement of
Alexandria--a far more accurate and critical writer than Hippolytus--to
our text leave no doubt on this point, and it is even probable that,
as Hort thought, most of Hippolytus’ information is gathered from
Basilides’ _Exegetica_. His account of the universe and its creation
is largely Stoic, as may be seen by a comparison of this chapter with
that on the Universe in Prof. E. V. Arnold’s excellent _Roman Stoicism_
(Cambridge, 1911); but he differs from all the Pagan philosophy of
his time by his view of matter which he makes neither pre-existent
nor malignant. In this, and in the “happy ending” to his drama of
the universe, we may perhaps see the result of the Golden Age of the
Antonines, and it is to this, perhaps, that he owed the influence that
he, without any great followers or successors, had upon the future
theology of orthodox and heretic alike. Many of his ideas, and even
a few of his very words, appear in documents like the later parts of
the _Pistis Sophia_, and in certain Manichæan writings, although the
strict monotheism which distinguishes them is in sharp contrast with
the dualism of his successors. This begets a doubt whether these last
were conscious borrowers of his opinion, or whether both he and they
took their doctrines from some common source of Eastern tradition not
now recognizable; but on the whole, the first-named hypothesis seems
the more probable.]
[Footnote 103: Σατορνεῖλος. So Epiph., _Haer._ XXIII, and Theodoret,
_Haer. Fab._, I, 3, spell the name. Iren., I, 22; Eusebius, _H.E._, IV,
7, and later writers spell it Σατορνῖνος. All these accounts, however,
together with that in our text, are in effect copies of the chapter in
Iren., which is the earliest in time that has remained to us. Salmon
in _D.C.B._, s.v. “Saturninus,” thinks that this last is itself copied
from Justin Martyr, which is likely enough, but remains without proof.]
[Footnote 104: Epiphanius, _Haer._ XXIII, p. 124, Oehl. adds to this
that Saturninus and Basilides were co-disciples, which, if true, would
connect their systems with Menander’s teacher, Simon Magus. Nothing
further is, however, known about Saturnilus or Saturninus or his
heresy, which Epiphanius makes the third after Christ, nor is there any
mention in any of the heresiologies of any writings by him. His story
of a First or Pattern Man made in the image of the Supreme Being is
common, as has been said, to many of the early heresies, and reappears
in Manichæism. It is probably to be referred to some tradition current
in Western Asia. See Bousset’s _Hauptprobleme der Gnosis_, cap. “Der
Urmensch.”]
[Footnote 105: τῆς αὐθεντίας, “one who holds absolute rule.” _Summa
potestas_, Cr.]
[Footnote 106: Cf. Gen. i. 26.]
[Footnote 107: This story is also met with among the Ophites. See
Iren. (I, xxx. 5), where life is given to the grovelling figure by
Jaldabaoth, the chief of the seven powers. Epiphanius adds to it that
the world-makers divided the cosmos among them by lot, and that it was
a spark of his own Power that the “Power on high” sent down for the
vivification of the First Man, “which spark, he says, they fancy to be
the human soul.”]
[Footnote 108: καὶ τὰ λοιπὰ ἐξ ὧν ἐγένετο, εἰς ἐκεῖνα ἀναλύεσθαι.]
[Footnote 109: So Miller. Theodoret has Σωτῆρα, “Saviour,” for Father.]
[Footnote 110: Words in ( ) restored from Epiphanius.]
[Footnote 111: No necessary mistake or confusion, as has been thought.
The “deposition” might be merely that of an unsuccessful general, as in
Manichæism.]
[Footnote 112: Marcion of Pontus was the heresiarch most dreaded by the
Ante-Nicene Fathers, and is said to have led away from the Primitive
Church a greater number of adherents than any teacher of that age,
with the doubtful exception of Valentinus. He also differed from all
other heretics of the time in setting up a Church fully equipped with
bishops, priests, and deacons over against the Catholic, and in seeing
that his followers openly avowed their faith in times of persecution.
He rejected the Old Testament entirely, and reduced the New to a
shorter edition of the Gospel of St. Luke and ten of the Epistles of
St. Paul. This has led to his heresy receiving more attention than
any other of its contemporaries at the hands of modern scholars,
especially in Germany. Hence it is to be regretted that the chapter in
our text which is devoted to him adds nothing to our knowledge of his
history or tenets, while its statement that Marcion called the Demiurge
πονηρός (wicked) shows either that Hippolytus was ignorant of Marcion’s
opinions, or that he misread his authority. The first is the more
likely theory, as his master Irenæus gives a more scanty account of
Marcion than of any other heretic, while promising to write a special
treatise against him. This intention does not seem to have been carried
out, and it is probable that while the Marcionite heresy flourished at
an early date in the Eastern provinces of the Empire, it had too slight
a hold in the West to have given such writers as Irenæus and Hippolytus
much first-hand knowledge concerning it. It is also noted that in the
so-called “epitome of heresies” in Book X, Hippolytus does not, after
his manner with the other heresies, quote from this chapter.]
[Footnote 113: τοῦ παντός. This expression, as has been many times said
above, means the universe without the Void. It does not therefore,
exclude the collateral existence of Chaos or unformed matter.]
[Footnote 114: This accusation of incontinence against Marcion is
disproved by Tertullian, _de Præscript_, c. 30. Cf. _Forerunners_, II,
206, n. 5.]
[Footnote 115: Φιλία, Cr., “_Amicitia_,” Macm., “Friendship.” The
stronger word Love seems to express better Hippolytus’ meaning. It is,
of course, distinct from the ἀγάπη or “charity” of the A. V.]
[Footnote 116: He refers to the scanty account of Empedocles’ doctrines
in Book I, _q.v._]
[Footnote 117: κλεψιλόγος, “word-stealer.”]
[Footnote 118: κοσμεῖται, “set in order.”]
[Footnote 119: κρούνωμα βρότειον, ll. 55-57, Karsten; 33-35, Stein. Cr.
translates these words _humanam scaturiginem_, and Macm., “the mortal
font.” It is difficult to assign any meaning to them in the absence of
the context.]
[Footnote 120: τρεφομένοις, “things in course of nurture.”]
[Footnote 121: ζῷα, “animals.”]
[Footnote 122: He appears to ignore the desert, or perhaps thinks this
no part of the _ordered_ world.]
[Footnote 123: ὑπόθεσιν, lit., “substructure.”]
[Footnote 124: πνεῦμα, a manifest slip for Ἀήρ as before.]
[Footnote 125: στοργή, as in the N. T.]
[Footnote 126: ὀλέθριον.]
[Footnote 127: εἰς τὸ ἓν ἀποκαταστάσεως. The Codex has τὸν ἕνα. That
the meaning is as given above, see p. 373 Cr., where we find ἐκ πολλῶν
ποιήσῃ τὸ ἕν κ.τ.λ.]
[Footnote 128: ll. 110, 111, Stein. In p. 274 Cr., _supra_, these lines
are quoted as the opinions of “the Pythagoreans.”]
[Footnote 129: τὸ πᾶν, not τὸ ὅλον. See n. on I, p. 35 _supra_.]
[Footnote 130: ἰδέα, “species”; so Cruice.]
[Footnote 131: κλάδοι, lit., “branches.”]
[Footnote 132: ll. 107, 205, Karsten.]
[Footnote 133: l. 7, Karsten; 381, Stein.]
[Footnote 134: ll. 4, Karsten; 372, 373, Stein.]
[Footnote 135: l. 5, Karsten; 374, Stein.]
[Footnote 136: νοητός, “that which can be understood by the mind rather
than by the senses.”]
[Footnote 137: εἴδεα θνητῶν, “forms of mortals.”]
[Footnote 138: ll. 6, Karsten; 375, 376, Stein.]
[Footnote 139: ll. 15-19, Karsten; 377-380, Stein.]
[Footnote 140: μεμερισμένου, _minutatim divisi_, Cr.]
[Footnote 141: ἐγκρατεῖς εἶναι, “to be abstainers.”]
[Footnote 142: ll. 1, 2, Karsten; 369, 370, Stein.]
[Footnote 143: νοητήν, as before.]
[Footnote 144: ἐπινοεῖσθαι.]
[Footnote 145: Reading for ἀδινῇσιν ... πραπίδεσσιν, ἰδυιῄσι
πραπίδεσσιν, as in Hom., _Il._, I, 608.]
[Footnote 146: Φύσις ἑκάστῳ, “the nature of each one”?]
[Footnote 147: Cf. ll. 313 _sqq._, Karsten, and 222 _sqq._, Stein.
Schneidewin has restored the very bad text in _Philologus_, VI, 166.
But the lines are still obscure--even for Empedocles. They seem to hint
at a hidden meaning, to be got by study.]
[Footnote 148: κολοβοδάκτυλος. See _Journal of Classical and Sacred
Philology_ (Cambridge), March 1855, p. 87. The story of St. Mark
cutting off his thumb to make himself ineligible for the priesthood is
quoted by Cruice from St. Jerome.]
[Footnote 149: ἀντιπαράθεσιν, “the setting over against.”]
[Footnote 150: ὑπολαμβάνεις. Cr. and Macm. both translate, “as you
suppose them to be.” But Marcion could have been in no doubt as to his
own opinions.]
[Footnote 151: Marcion did not say that the Demiurge, whom he probably
identified with the God of the Jews, was wicked. On the contrary, he
said that he was just, though harsh. See _Forerunners_, II, xi.]
[Footnote 152: εὐαγγελίζῃ.]
[Footnote 153: Cf. 1 Tim. iv. 1-5, as quoted in Book VIII, p. 422 Cr.]
[Footnote 154: Reading τοὺς σεαυτοῦ μαθητάς for the τοὺς ἑαυτοῦ μαθητάς
of the text.]
[Footnote 155: All this argument is a _petitio principii_ of the most
flagrant kind. There is nothing in the quotations here given from
Empedocles to show that that philosopher made Love and Strife the two
ἀρχαί of the universe, as Empedocles associates with them the four
“elements” of Fire, Earth, Water and Air, and Ἀνάγκη or Fate seems,
according to his teaching, to be superior to them all. The quotations
prove, however, that Empedocles taught metempsychosis, unless
Hippolytus is here confusing him with Pythagoras. Marcion did not, and
the reason that he gave for abstinence from animal food is different
from that attributed to Empedocles. The quotations themselves are much
corrupted, and Hippolytus seems to have taken them from memory only, as
he is careful to say that these are “something like this.” All of them
appear in Karsten’s or Stein’s collections, which were made before the
discovery of our text, and are, therefore, an argument against Salmon’s
theory of forgery.]
[Footnote 156: καθαριωτάτη, “purest.”]
[Footnote 157: This Prepon, probably a Syrian, is mentioned by no
other writer except Theodoret, who doubtless borrowed from our text.
The “Bardesianes” was probably the famous Bardaisan or Ibn Daisan who
taught at Edessa and was a follower of Valentinus. It is noteworthy
that the Armenian author, Eznig of Goghp, gives a different account of
Marcion’s teaching from any of the Western heresiologists and makes him
admit the independent existence of a third principle in the shape of
malignant matter. For this, see _Forerunners_, II, p. 217, n. 2.]
[Footnote 158: διαφερούσας, “differentiated”?]
[Footnote 159: ll. 338-341, Stein. Schneidewin has restored the lines
as far as is possible.]
[Footnote 160: ὑπόπλασμα, “that which has been moulded.”]
[Footnote 161: Μεσίτης. Not intercessor, but something placed between
two others.]
[Footnote 162: Not St. Paul, but Luke xvii. 19.]
[Footnote 163: There is no indication of the source from which
Hippolytus drew the material for this chapter. It does not seem to have
been the writings of Irenæus, for his remarks in I, xxv tell us even
less about Marcion than our text. Possibly Hippolytus was here indebted
to the work of Justin Martyr, which seems to have been extant in the
time of Photius. With the exception of the notice of Prepon, our text
contains nothing that was not known otherwise.]
[Footnote 164: This Carpocrates, whom Epiphanius calls Carpocras, seems
to have been another of “the great Gnostics of Hadrian’s time,” and to
have been learned in the Platonic philosophy. He is mentioned by all
the heresiologists, but there is little that is distinctive about his
tenets as they have come down to us, and his followers were probably
few. They are accused by Irenæus, from whose chapter on the subject
Hippolytus’ account is condensed, of a kind of Antinomianism having its
origin in the contention that all actions are indifferent.]
[Footnote 165: μετὰ τοῦ ἀγενήτου Θεοῦ περιφορᾷ.]
[Footnote 166: χωρήσασαν can only apply to ψυχή. The return of the
Power to the Deity could not be supposed to affect other souls.]
[Footnote 167: ὁμοίως.]
[Footnote 168: κατήργησε.]
[Footnote 169: τῆς ὑπερκειμένης ἐξουσίας. Cruice points out that these
words have slipped into the text from the margin. Irenæus has ex _eadem
circumlatione devenientes_, “descending from the same sphere,” which is
doubtless correct.]
[Footnote 170: εἰς διαβολήν, probably a play on διάβολος.]
[Footnote 171: ἐν μιᾷ παρουσίᾳ, “in one appearance.”]
[Footnote 172: κατασκευάζουσι, “mould or cast.”]
[Footnote 173: This chapter is in effect a condensation of Irenæus
I, xx, which it follows closely. Hippolytus omits mention of the
obscenities attributed to the sect which are hinted at by Irenæus
and described fully by Epiphanius. Irenæus also mentions that they
claimed to get their doctrine from the secret teaching of Jesus to
the Apostles, that one Marcellina taught their heresy in Rome under
Pope Anicetus, and that the images of Christ were worshipped by them,
_more Gentilium_, along with those of Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle.
Epiphanius derives the heresy from Simon Magus. It is suggested that
the branding by which they knew each other was due to a “baptism by
fire.”]
[Footnote 174: This chapter also is practically identical with Irenæus
I, xxi, which is extant in the Latin version. Cerinthus was one of the
earliest of the Gnostics and tradition makes him contemporary with St.
John. He was probably a member of the Jewish-Alexandrian school of
Philo, and Epiphanius (_Haer._ XXVIII) adds to Irenæus’ account that he
taught in Asia, and especially in Galatia.]
[Footnote 175: αὐθεντίας, as before.]
[Footnote 176: κηρύξας, perhaps “preached.”]
[Footnote 177: Does this amount to an admission of the resurrection of
the body? If so it is in marked contrast to the Docetism of Marcion and
others.]
[Footnote 178: Ἐβιοναῖοι, Latin [Iren.] _qui dicuntur Ebionæi_, as
if they were followers of a mythical leader Ebion. The existence of
any founder of this name is now generally given up, and the word is
more probably a mere transliteration of the Hebrew אביון, “poor.” The
Ebionites were in all likelihood Judaizing Christians who had remained
behind in Palestine through the wars of Titus and Hadrian, and still
kept to the observance of the Mosaic Law. The brief statement in our
text is probably derived from Hippolytus’ recollection of Irenæus,
I, c. 21, the first sentence being in nearly the same words in both
authors. Irenæus adds to it that they used the gospel of St. Matthew
only and did not consider St. Paul as an apostle, because he did not
keep the Law; also that they adored Jerusalem as the “house of God.”]
[Footnote 179: μυθεύουσιν, “fable.” Irenæus’ Latin version here inserts
a _non_, evidently a clerical error.]
[Footnote 180: ποιήσαντα, Cruice, _servare_, Macm., “fulfilled.” In
either case a curious meaning for ποιέω. Cf. the ποιέω τὴν μουσικήν of
Plato, _Phaedo_, 60. E.]
[Footnote 181: In the accounts of the two Theodoti, which may here be
taken together, Hippolytus leaves Irenæus, from whom he has hitherto
been content to copy his account of the smaller heresies, and draws
from some source not yet identified, but which may be the _Little
Labyrinth_ of Caius (see Salmon in _D.C.B._, s.v. “Theodotus.”). His
description of the heresy of Theodotus of Byzantium corresponds with
that of Eusebius (_Eccl. Hist._, V, 28). The Melchizedekian theory of
the “other” Theodotus is mentioned by Philaster (c. 53, p. 54, Oehl.)
without reference to Theodotus, although on the preceding page he has
given the Byzantine heresy as in our text. Pseudo-Tertullian in _Adv.
Omn. Haer._ (II, p. 764, Oehl.) gives the story of both Theodoti much
as here, which may give support to the theory that this tract is a
summary of the lost _Syntagma_ of Hippolytus. Epiphanius (_Haer._
XXXIV, XXXV) divides the Melchizedekians from the Theodotians, and says
the first were ἀποσπασθέντες from the second, but without naming the
banker. He also gives some particulars about the first Theodotus, which
he does not seem to have taken from Hippolytus. He quotes one Hierax as
saying that Melchizedek was the Holy Spirit, and says that “some” say
that Heracles was his father and Astaroth or Asteria his mother, while
Melchizedek plays a great part in the earliest part of the _Pistis
Sophia_ as the “Receiver of the Light.”]
[Footnote 182: ἀποσπάσας, lit., “torn away.”]
[Footnote 183: So that Hippolytus believed in the mythical founder of
the Ebionites.]
[Footnote 184: εὐσεβέστατον.]
[Footnote 185: _i. e._ the heretics.]
[Footnote 186: γνῶμαι.]
[Footnote 187: Acts vi. 5.]
[Footnote 188: Rev. ii. 6.]
[Footnote 189: This Cerdo is only known to us as a predecessor of
Marcion, whose teaching he appears to have influenced, although in
what measure cannot now be ascertained. His date seems to be fairly
well settled as about the year 135 (see _D.C.B._, s.h.v.), which is
that of his coming to Rome, and it was doubtless here that Marcion
met him. According to Irenæus, his teaching was mainly in secret and
he was always ready to make submission to the Church and recant his
errors when publicly arraigned. His doctrine, so far as it has come
down to us, does not seem to differ from that of Marcion, Tertullian
(_adv. Marcion_) and the tractate _Adv. Omn. Haer._ giving the best
account of it. Of Lucian, we know nothing, save that, while Epiphanius
(_Haer._ XLII, p. 688, Oehl.) makes him out the immediate successor
of Marcion and to have been succeeded by Apelles, Tertullian (_de
Resurrectione_, c. 2) speaks of him--if he be the person there referred
to as Lucanus--as an independent teacher with no apparent connection
with Marcion’s heresy. He adds that he taught a resurrection neither
of the body nor of the soul, but of some part of man which he calls a
“third nature.” See _Forerunners_, II, p. 218, n. 2, and 220.]
[Footnote 190: Ἀντιπαραθέσεις. See n. on p. 88 _supra_.]
[Footnote 191: Of this Apelles, our knowledge is mainly derived from
Tertullian, for references to whom see Hort’s article “Apelles” in
_D.C.B._ He was certainly later than Marcion, for Rhodo (see Euseb.,
_Hist. Eccl._, V, c. 13), writing at the end of the second century,
A.D., speaks of him as still alive, though an “old man.” The same
author seems to consider that on Marcion’s death he founded a sect
of his own, in which he “corrected” Marcion’s teaching in some
particulars. This is doubtful, but Rhodo’s statements go to show that
he quoted from the Old Testament and did not hold the body of Jesus to
be a phantasm. Tertullian also mentions several times the connection of
Apelles with the “possessed” Philumene, on which he puts a construction
negatived by the evidence of Rhodo. Cf. _Forerunners_, II, pp. 218-220.]
[Footnote 192: Hippolytus here accepts the statement of Tertullian (_de
Præscript._, c. 30) that Apelles wrote a book called Φανερώσεις, or
_Manifestations_, containing the prophecies of Philumene. He repeats
this with more distinctness in Book X, c. 20, _q. v._]
[Footnote 193: ἄσαρκον.]
[Footnote 194: οὐσία.]
[Footnote 195: ἀνασκολοπισθέντα, lit., “impaled.” It is, however, used
by both Philo and Lucian as equivalent to “crucified.”]
[Footnote 196: This “giving back” of the component parts of man’s being
to the different powers from which they are derived is a frequent
theme among the later Gnostics, and is fully described in the _Pistis
Sophia_. Cf. _Forerunners_, II, p. 184.]
[Footnote 197: The source of this chapter is certainly the tractate
_Adv. Omn. Haer._, formerly attributed to Tertullian and to be found
in the second volume of that author’s works in Oehler’s edition. No
other author mentions Apelles with such particularity, and all those
subsequent to Tertullian appear to have taken their information either
from Tertullian’s other works, from this tractate, or from our text.
This tractate has been discussed in the Introduction (see Vol. I,
pp. 12 and 23 _supra_) and perhaps all difficulties may be solved by
supposing it to be, not indeed the actual _Syntagma_ of Hippolytus, but
a summary of it.]
BOOK VIII
THE DOCETAE, MONOIMUS, AND OTHERS
[Sidenote: p. 396.] 1. These are the contents of the 8th [Book] of the
Refutation of all Heresies.
2. What are the opinions of the Docetae,[1] and that they teach things
which they say are from the Physicist Philosophy.[2]
3. How Monoimus speaks foolishly, giving heed to poets and
geometricians and arithmeticians.
4. How Tatian’s [heresy] sprang from the opinions of Valentinus and
Marcion wherefrom he compounded his own. And that Hermogenes has made
use of the teachings of Socrates, not of Christ.
5. How those err who contend that Easter should be celebrated on the
14th day [of the month].
6. What is the error of the Phrygians, who think Montanus and Priscilla
and Maximilla to be prophets.
[Sidenote: p. 397.] 7. What is the vain doctrine of the Encratites, and
that their teachings are compounded not out of the Holy Scriptures, but
from their own [views] and from those of the Gymnosophists among the
Indians.[3]
1. _The Docetae._
8. Since the many, making no use of the Lord’s counsel, while having
the beam[4] in their eye, yet give out that they can see, it seems to
us that we should not be silent as to their doctrines. So that they,
being brought to shame by our forthcoming refutation, shall recognize
how the Saviour counselled them to take away the beam from their own
eye, and then to see clearly the straw which was in their brother’s
eye. Now, therefore, having set forth sufficiently and adequately
the opinions of most of the heretics in the seven books before this,
we shall not now be silent upon those which follow. Exhibiting the
ungrudging grace of the Holy Spirit, we shall also refute those
who seem to have [Sidenote: p. 398.] attained security, They call
themselves Docetae and teach thus:--The first God[5] is as it were
the seed of a fig, in size altogether of the smallest, but in power
boundless, a magnitude unreckoned in quantity, lacking nothing for
bringing forth, a refuge for the fearful, a covering for the naked, or
veil for shame, a fruit sought for, whereto, he says, the Seeker came
thrice and found not.[6] Wherefore, he says, He cursed the fig-tree,[7]
so that that sweet fruit was not found on it, [_i. e._] the fruit that
was sought for. And [the seed] being, so to speak briefly, of such a
nature and so old [yet] small and without magnitude, the cosmos came
into being from God, as they think, in some such way as this:--The
branches of the tree becoming tender, put forth leaves, as is seen,
and fruit follows, wherein is preserved the innumerable [Sidenote: p.
399.] [and] stored-up seed of the fig. We think, therefore, that three
things first come into being from the seed of the fig, the stem which
is the fig-tree, leaves, and the fruit or fig, as we have before said.
Thus, says he, three Aeons came into being as principles from the
First Principle of the universals.[8] And on this, he says, Moses was
not silent, when he said that the words of God were three: “Darkness,
cloud and whirlwind and he added no more.”[9] For, he says, God added
nothing to the Three Aeons, but they sufficed and do suffice for all
things which come into being. But God Himself abides by Himself and far
removed from all the Aeons.[10]
When, therefore, each of these Aeons, he says, had received a principle
of generation, as has been said, it little by little increased and
grew great and became perfect. Now they think that the perfect number
[is] ten.[11] Then the Aeons having come into being equal in number
and perfection, as they think, they were thirty Aeons in all,[12] each
of them being complete in a decad. But they are divided and the three
having equal honour among themselves, differ in position only, because
one of them is first, [Sidenote: p. 400.] another second, and another
third. But this position produced a difference of power. For he who
is nearest to the First God--to the seed as it were--chances to have
a power more fruitful than the others, he who is the Immeasureable
One having measured himself ten times in magnitude. And the
Incomprehensible One, who has become second in position to the first,
comprehended himself six times. And the third in position, becoming
removed to an infinite distance by reason of his brethren’s dilatation,
conceived[13] himself three times and, as it were, bound himself by a
certain eternal bond of unity.[14]
9. And this they think is the Saviour’s saying:--“The sower went
forth to sow and that which fell upon good and fair ground made
some 100, some 60, and some 30.”[15] And hence, says he, He said,
“He that hath ears to hear, let him hear,” because this is not what
all understand.[16] All these Aeons [to wit] the Three and all the
boundlessly boundless ones [who come] from them, are masculo-feminine
ones.[17] Therefore having increased and become great, and all of them
being from that one first seed of their concord [Sidenote: p. 401.] and
unity, and all becoming together one Aeon, they all begat from the one
Virgin Mary, the begettal common to them all, a Saviour in the midst
of them all,[18] of equal power in everything with the seed of the
fig, save that He was begotten. But that first seed whence is born the
fig is unbegotten. Then those three Aeons having been adorned[19] with
all virtue and holiness, as these teachers think, all the conceivable,
lacking-nothing, nature of that Only-Begotten[20] Son--for He alone
was born to the boundless Aeons by a triple generation; for three
immeasureable Aeons with one mind begot Him--was adorned also. But all
these conceivable and eternal things were Light; but the Light was not
formless and idle, nor did it lack anything superadded to it: but it
contained within itself the boundless forms of the various animals here
below corresponding in number to the boundlessly boundless after the
pattern of the fig-tree. And it shone from on high into [Sidenote: p.
402.] the underlying chaos. And this [chaos], being at once illuminated
and given form from the various forms on high, received consistence[21]
and took all the supernal forms from the Third Aeon who had tripled
himself.[22] But this Third Aeon, seeing all the types[23] that were
his at once intercepted in the underlying darkness beneath, and not
being ignorant of the power of the darkness and the simplicity and
generosity[24] of the light, would not allow the shining types from on
high to be drawn far down by the darkness beneath. But he subjected
[the Firmament] to the Aeons. Then, having fixed it below, he divided
in twain the darkness and the light.[25] “And he called the light which
is above the firmament, Day, and the darkness he called Night.”[26]
Therefore, as I have said, when all the boundless forms of the Third
Aeon were intercepted in this lowest darkness, and the impress[27] of
that same Aeon was stamped upon it along with the rest, a living fire
came from the light whence the Great Ruler came into being [Sidenote:
p. 403.] of whom Moses says: “In the beginning God created Heaven and
Earth.”[28] Moses says that this fiery God[29] spoke from the bush,
that is from the darksome air, for _batos_ [bush] is the whole air
which underlies the darkness. But it is _batos_, says Moses according
to him, because all the forms of light go from on high downwards,
having the air as a passage.[30] And the word from the bush is no less
recognized by us. For a sound significant of speech is reverberating
air, without which human speech could not be recognized. And not only
does our word from the bush, that is from the air, make laws for and be
a fellow-citizen with us, but also odours and colours manifest their
powers to us through the air.
10. Then this fiery God--the fire born from the light--made the cosmos,
as Moses says, in this manner, he being substanceless,[31] [and]
darkness having the substance and being ever silent towards the eternal
types of the light which are intercepted below.[32] Therefore, until
the Saviour’s manifestation, there was a certain great wandering of
souls by reason of the God of the Light, the fiery Demiurge. For the
forms are called souls, having been cooled down[33] from the things
above and they continue in darkness to change about from body to
body under the supervision of [Sidenote: p. 404.] the Demiurge. And
that this is so, we may know from the words of Job: “And I also am a
wanderer from place to place and from house to house.”[34] The Saviour
also says: “And if you will receive it, this is the Elias who shall
come. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.”[35] But by the Saviour,
change of bodies has been made to cease; and faith is preached for the
putting-away of transgressions.[36] In some such way that Only-Begotten
Son beholding from on high the forms of the Aeons changing about in
the darksome bodies willed to come down for their deliverance. When
He saw that the multitude of Aeons could not bear to behold without
ceasing the Pleroma of all the Aeons, but remained as mortals dreading
corruption,[37] being held by the greatness and glory of power, He drew
Himself together as a very great flash in a very small body, or rather,
like the light of the eye drawn together under the eyelids, and goes
forth to the [Sidenote: p. 405.] heaven and the shining stars. And
there He again withdraws Himself under the eyelids at His pleasure.
Thus does the light of the eye, and although it is everywhere present
and is all things to us, it is invisible; but we see only the lids of
the eye, the white corners, a broad membrane of many folds and fibres,
a horn-like coat, and under this a berry-like pupil, both net-like and
disk-like, and if there are any other coats to the light of the eye, it
is enwrapped and lies hidden within them.
Thus, he says, the Only-Begotten Son, eternal on high, did on Himself
(a form) corresponding to each Aeon of the Three Aeons, and being in
the triacontad of Aeons, came into the world of the Decad[38] being of
such age and as little as we have said, invisible, unknown, without
glory and not believed upon. in order then, say the Docetae,[39]
that he might do on also the Outer Darkness which is the flesh, an
angel came down with Him from [Sidenote: p. 406.] on high and made
announcement[40] to Mary as it is written, and He was born from her as
it is written. And He who came from on high put on that which was born,
and did all things as it is written in the Gospels; and was baptized in
Jordan. And he was baptized, receiving the type and seal in the water
of the body born from the Virgin, in order that when the Ruler should
condemn the form which was his to death, to the Cross, that soul which
had grown up within the body should strip off that body and affix it to
the Tree. And thus (the soul) having triumphed by its means over the
Principles and Authorities would not be found naked, but would put on
that body reflected in the likeness of that flesh in the water when He
was baptized. This he says, is the Saviour’s saying: “Unless a man be
born of water and of [the] Spirit, he shall not enter into the kingdom
of the heavens; because that which is born of the flesh is flesh.”[41]
From the thirty Aeons, then, He did on thirty forms. Wherefore
that Eternal One was thirty years on the earth, every Aeon being
manifested in his own year. And souls are all the forms which have
been intercepted from each of [Sidenote: p. 407.] the thirty Aeons,
and each of them possesses a nature capable of understanding the Jesus
who exists according to nature which that Only-Begotten One from the
eternal places puts on. But these places are different. Therefore so
many heresies contending [with each other] about it, seek Jesus. And
He is claimed[42] by them all, but is seen differently by each from
the different places. Towards whom, he says, each [soul] is borne and
hurries, thinking that she is alone. Who is indeed her kinsman and
fellow-citizen. Whom she beholding for the first time recognizes as her
own brother and all the rest as bastards. Those then who have their
nature from the lower places cannot see the forms of the Saviour above
them. But those on high, he say, from the middle Decad and the most
excellent Ogdoad[43]--whence, say they, we are--know Jesus the Saviour
not in part but wholly, and are alone the Perfect from above, while the
others are only partly so.
[Sidenote: p. 408.] 11. I think then that this is for right-thinking
persons sufficient for the knowledge of the complicated and
inconsistent heresy of the Docetae--those who attempt to make arguments
about inaccessible and incomprehensible matter calling themselves thus.
Certain of whom do not only _seem_[44] to be mad; and we have proved
that the beam from such matter has entered their own eye, if they are
anyhow able to see clearly; and, if not, they will be unable to blind
others. Whose dogma the early sophists of Greece anticipated in many
points of sophistry, as our readers will understand. These then are the
teachings of the Docetae.[45] It seems right also that we should not
keep silence as to the [teachings] of Monoimus.
2. _Monoimus._
12. Monoimus the Arab[46] was a long way off[47] the glory of the
great-voiced poet; for he thinks that some such man as Oceanus existed,
of whom the poet speaks somehow like this:--
[Sidenote: p. 409.] Oceanus, the birth of gods and birth of man.[48]
Turning this into other words, he says that a Man is the All which is
the source of the universals, [being] unbegotten, incorruptible, and
eternal; and that there is a Son of the aforesaid Man, who is begotten,
and capable of suffering, being born in a timeless, unwilled, and
previously undefined way. For such, says he, is the Power of that Man.
And when it was so, the son of the Power came into being more quickly
than reasoning or counsel. And this is, he says, the saying in the
Scriptures: “He was and came into being,”[49] which is: Man was and
his son came into being, as if one were to say: Fire was and Light
came into being in a timeless, unwilled, and previously undefined
way, while being at the same time fire. But this Man is a single
monad, uncompounded [and] undifferentiated, [and yet] compounded [and]
differentiated, loving and at peace with all things, [and yet] fighting
with and at war with all things before him,[50] unlike and like, as
it were a certain musical [Sidenote: p. 410.] harmony which contains
whatever one may say or leave unsaid, showing all things and giving
birth to all things. “This is Father, this is Mother, Two Immortal
names.”[51] But for the sake of an instance, conceive, he says, as the
greatest image of the Perfect Man, the one tittle which is one tittle
uncompounded, simple, a pure monad having no composition whatever from
anything, [yet] compounded of many forms, of many parts. That undivided
One, he says, is the many-faced and myriad-eyed and myriad-named one
tittle of the Iota,[52] which is an image of that Perfect and Invisible
Man.
13. The one tittle, he says, is then the monad and a decad. For by this
power of the one tittle of the Iota [are produced] also [the] dyad
and triad and tetrad and pentad and hexad and heptad and ogdoad and
ennead up to the ten. For these are the diversified numbers dwelling
within that simple and uncompounded tittle of the [Sidenote: p. 411.]
Iota. And this is the saying:--“Because it pleased the whole Pleroma to
dwell within the Son of Man bodily.”[53] For such compounds of numbers
from the simple and uncompounded one tittle of the Iota become he says
bodily hypostases. Therefore, he says, the Son of Man was born from
the Perfect Man, whom none know. But, he says, every creature who is
ignorant of the Son, represents Him as the offspring of a woman. Of
which Son some shadowy rays come very close to this world and secure
and control change [of bodies and] birth. And the beauty of that Son
of Man is till now unrevealed to all men who are misled as to the
offspring of a woman. Nothing then of the things here come into being,
he says, from that Man, nor will they ever do so; but all things that
have come into being have done so not from the whole, but from some
part of the Son of Man. For, says he, the Son of Man is one Iota, one
tittle flowing from on high, full, and filling full all things, and
containing within itself whatever the Man, Father of the Son of Man
possesses.[54]
[Sidenote: p. 412.] 14. Now the cosmos, as Moses says, came into being
in six days, that is, in six powers which are in the one tittle of the
Iota.[55] [But] the seventh, a rest and a Sabbath, came into being
from the Hebdomad which is over Earth and Water and Fire and Air, out
of which the cosmos came into being by the one tittle. For the cubes
and the octahedrons, and [the] pyramids and all the figures like these
of which Fire, Air, Water, [and earth] consist, came into being from
the numbers which are comprised in that single tittle of the Iota,
which is a Perfect Son of a Perfect Man. When then, says he, Moses
says that (the) rod was turned about in different ways for the plagues
on Egypt,[56] these [plagues], he says, are symbols allegorizing the
Creation. [For] he does not use the rod which is one tittle of the
Iota, duplex and varied, as a figure[57] for more plagues than ten.
This Creation of the world, he says, is the ten plagues.[58] For
[Sidenote: p. 413.] everything struck produces and bears fruit as, for
instance, vine-shoots. Man, he says, has burst forth from Man, and was
severed from him by a certain blow,[59] so that he might be born and
might declare the Law which Moses laid down after having received it
from God. The Law is according to that one tittle, the Decalogue which
allegorizes the divine mysteries of the words. For, says he, the Ten
Plagues and the Decalogue[60] are the whole knowledge of the universals
which none has known who has been misled concerning the offspring of
the woman. And if you say that the whole Law is a Pentateuch, it is
[still] from the pentad which is comprised in the one tittle. But
the whole Law is for those who have not thoroughly crippled their
understanding [a] mystery, a new feast not yet grown old, legal and
eternal, a Passover of the Lord God kept unto our generations by those
who can see [and] beginning on the 14th [day] which is the beginning,
he says, of the decad from which they reckon.[61] For the monad up
to 14 is the sum total of the one tittle of the perfect number. And
[Sidenote: p. 414.] one + two + three + four become ten, wherefore
it is the one tittle. But from fourteen up to twenty-one, a hebdomad
subsists in the one tittle, the unleavened creature of the world in
all these.[62] For what, says he, should the one tittle want of any
substance like leaven for the Passover of the Lord, the eternal feast
which is given for generations. For the whole cosmos and all the causes
of creation are the Passover Feast of the Lord. For God rejoices in the
transmutation of creation which is wrought under the strokes of the one
tittle. The which is the rod of Moses given by God, which strikes the
Egyptians and changes the bodies, as did the hand of Moses, from water
into blood. And the other [plagues] are in nearly the same way [such as
that of the] locusts, wherefore change of the elements he calls flesh
into grass: “for all flesh is grass,”[63] he says. [Sidenote: p. 415.]
But none the less do these men in some such way receive the whole Law.
Following, perhaps, as it seems to me, the Greeks who say that there
are Substance and Quality and Quantity and Relation and Position and
Action and Possession and Passion.[64]
15. So for example Monoimus himself says distinctly in his letter to
Theophrastus:[65] “Leave aside enquiry concerning God and Creation
and the like, and enquire about Him from thyself, and learn who it is
who simply makes His own all that is within thee, saying ‘My God, my
mind, my understanding, my soul, my body.’ Learn also what are grief
and rejoicing, and love and hate, and undesired watching and sleep,
and undesired anger and love. And if,” says he, “thou dost carefully
seek out this, thou wilt find Him in thyself [as both] one and many
things after the likeness of that one tittle, he finding the outlet for
Himself.”[66] This then is what these [men] say, which we are under
no necessity to compare with what has been before excogitated by the
Greeks. Since it is plain from [Sidenote: p. 416.] their statements
that they have their origin from the geometrical and arithmetical art,
which the disciples of Pythagoras set forth more excellently. As the
reader may learn in the passages where we have before explained all the
wisdom of the Greeks.
But since we have sufficiently refuted Monoimus,[67] let us see what
others have elaborated who wish thereby to raise for themselves an idle
name.
3. _Tatian._
16. But Tatian, although himself a disciple of Justin Martyr, was not
of like mind with his master, but attempted something new. He says that
there were certain Aeons [about whom] he fables in the like way with
the Valentinians. But in the same way as Marcion he says that marriage
is destruction. And he asserts that Adam will not be saved, through his
becoming a leader of rebellion. And thus Tatian.[68]
4. _Hermogenes._
[Sidenote: p. 417.] 17. A certain Hermogenes[69] thinking also to
devise something new, says that God created all things from co-existent
and ungenerated matter. For he held it impossible that God should
create the things that are from those that are not. And that God is
ever Lord and Maker, but Matter ever a slave and [in process of]
becoming. But yet not all [matter], for, as it was being borne about
violently and disorderly, He set it in order in this manner. Beholding
it boiling like a pot on the fire, He divided it into parts; and that
part which he took from the All He reclaimed, and the other He allowed
to be borne about disorderly. And the reclaimed part, he says, is the
cosmos; and that the other remains waste and is called acosmic[70]
matter. He says that this is the essence[71] of all things, as if he
were introducing [Sidenote: p. 418.] a new doctrine to his disciples;
but he does not consider that this fable happens to be Socratic, and is
better worked out by Plato than by Hermogenes. But he confesses that
Christ is the Son of the God who created all things, and that He was
begotten of the Virgin and of Spirit according to the [common] voice
of the Gospels. Who after He had suffered rose again in a body and
appeared to His disciples, and ascending to the heavens, left His body
in the Sun, but Himself went on into the presence of the Father. And
in witness of this,[72] he thinks he is corroborated by the word which
David the Psalmist spake: “In the Sun he set up his tent, and like a
bridegroom coming forth from his bridal chamber, he will rejoice like a
giant to run his course.”[73] This then is what Hermogenes attempts.[74]
5. _About the Quartodecimans._[75]
18. But certain others, lovers of strife by nature, unskilled
[Sidenote: p. 419.] in knowledge, very quarrelsome by habit, maintain
that the Passover ought to be kept on the 14th day of the First Month,
according to the ordinance of the Law, on whatever day [of the week]
it may fall. They have regard [merely] to that which has been written
in the Law: [that is] that he will be accursed who does not keep it as
it is laid down. They pay no attention to the fact that it was enacted
for the Jews, who were to kill the True Passover. Which [Law] has
spread to the Gentiles and is understood by faith, not kept strictly
in the letter. They pay attention to this one commandment, but do not
regard the saying of the Apostle: “For I bear witness to every man who
is circumcised that he is a debtor to do the whole Law.”[76] In other
matters they agree concerning all things handed down to the Church by
the Apostles.
6. _Phrygians._[77]
19. But there are others also very heretical by nature, Phrygians by
race, who have fallen away after being deceived [Sidenote: p. 420.]
by certain women, Priscilla and Maximilla by name, whom they imagine
to be prophetesses. Into these they say the Spirit Paraclete has
entered and they likewise glorify [even] above these one Montanus as a
prophet. Having endless books of their own, they are not judging what
is said in them according to reason, nor giving heed to those capable
of judgment; but, carried along heedlessly by the faith that they have
in them, imagine that they learn more through them than from the Law,
the Prophets, and the Gospels. They glorify these wenches[78] above
Apostles and every grace,[79] since some of them dare to say that there
are those among them who have become greater than Christ. They confess
that God is the Father of the universals, and the creator of all things
in the same way as [does] the Church, and also [confess] whatever the
Gospel testifies concerning Christ. But they innovate in the matter
of feasts and fasts and the eating of vegetable food and roots,[80]
thinking that they have learned this from the women. And some of them,
agreeing with the heresy of the Noetians, say that the Father is the
Son, and that He by being born, underwent [Sidenote: p. 421.] both
suffering and death. Concerning these, I shall later explain more
minutely; for to many their heresy has become the starting-point of
evils. We judge then that what has been said is sufficient, we having
proved briefly to all that their many absurd books and attempts are
feeble and not worth consideration, whereto those of sound mind need
pay no heed.[81]
7. _Encratites._
20. But others calling themselves Encratites[82] confess the [facts]
about God and Christ in like manner with the Church. But with regard
to the way of life, they having become puffed up,[83] have reverted
[to earlier opinions]. They think themselves glorified through food
by abstaining from things which have had life, drinking water, and
forbidding marriage, and in the other things of life are austerely
careful. Such as they are judged to be rather Cynics than Christians,
seeing that they pay no heed to what was said to them aforetime
through the Apostle Paul, who prophesied the innovations that would
come by the folly of some, saying [Sidenote: p. 422.] thus:--“The
Spirit says expressly: In the last times some will fall away from
the wholesome teaching,[84] giving heed to deceiving spirits and the
teachings of demons, through the hypocrisy of men that speak lies,
branded in their own consciences as with a hot iron, forbidding to
marry and (commanding) to abstain from meats, which God created to be
received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth.
For every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be rejected
which is received with thanksgiving; for it is sanctified through the
words of God and prayer....”[85] This saying then of the Blessed Paul
is sufficient for the refutation of those who live thus and honour
themselves as righteous men, and to show that this also is a heresy.[86]
But although some other heresies are named [to wit those] of the
Cainites, Ophites or Noachites[87] and others such as they, I do not
think it necessary to set forth their sayings and doings, lest they
should thereby think themselves somebody or worthy of argument.[88] But
since what [Sidenote: p. 423.] has been said about them seems to be
sufficient, we will come to the source of all evils, the heresy of the
Noetians, and having disclosed its root and proved plainly the poison
lurking within it, we will hold back from such error those who have
been swept away by a violent spirit as by a torrent.
FOOTNOTES
[Footnote 1: Who these Docetae are is a puzzle. Although Cruice writes
the name Δοκήται, Salmon (_D.C.B._, s.h.n.) gives it as Δοκιταί which
is, he says, the spelling adopted by both Hippolytus and Clement of
Alexandria. Their tenets as here described have nothing to do with
the opinion that the body of Jesus existed in appearance only which
we have seen current among the Simonians, Basilidians, Marcionites,
and the followers of Saturninus and perhaps of Valentinus. Nor does
it seem connected with any proper name such as the fictitious one of
Ebion which was invented to explain to Greek ears the appellation
of the Ebionites. It may be thought, perhaps, that it was a kind of
nickname derived from this chapter’s opening metaphor of the δοκός
or “beam,” but this is too far-fetched to be insisted upon. Clement
is the only early author who mentions them, and then does so in a
fashion (_e. g._ _Strom._, VII, 17) which makes it fairly clear that
it is those who held Docetic opinions generally so called, and not
any special sect to which he is referring. He also says that Julius
Cassianus, a Valentinian, was the founder of Docetism of the Simonian
kind and St. Jerome (_adv. Lucifer_, 23) takes this further back by the
statement that the opinion in question was current in the life-time
of the Apostles. Nor is there anything novel or peculiar in the
doctrines set forth in our text of the Docitae or Docetae. The image
of the fig-tree with which this chapter opens is but an amplification
of the “Indivisible Point” put forward earlier in our text, and there
is nothing here stated which is inconsistent with the teachings of
Valentinus. This will be further discussed when we come to consider the
source of this chapter.]
[Footnote 2: ἐκ φυσικῆς φιλοσοφίας. That is, drawn from the study of
nature and natural objects such as trees and the anatomy of the eye,
for which see _infra_.]
[Footnote 3: No further reference is made to the Indian Gymnosophists
or “Brachmans,” and this sentence has probably slipped in from some
other part of the roll.]
[Footnote 4: δοκός, the “beam” of the Gospels (Cf. Matt. vii. 3, 4;
Luke vi. 41, 42). Hippolytus who here resumes his habit of punning
tries to connect it with δοκεῖν, “to seem.”]
[Footnote 5: Θεὸν εἶναι τὸν πρῶτον. That this construction is the right
one, see p. 400 Cr. and the summary in Book X, p. 496 Cr.]
[Footnote 6: The rhetorical form of this sentence should be noted.]
[Footnote 7: Cf. Matt. xii. 19, 20; Mark xi. 13-21; Luke xii. 7.]
[Footnote 8: As Salmon (_ubi cit._) points out, in the Valentinian
system, the male heads of the first three series of Aeons, _i. e._
Nous, Logos and Anthropos occupy a position corresponding to these
three first “principles” or ἀρχαί. The fact that their spouses or
syzygies are not here mentioned is accounted for by the statement
(on p. 101 _infra_) that they are all androgyne, or as is here said
“lacking nothing for generation,” _i. e._ capable of production without
assistance.]
[Footnote 9: Cf. Deut. v. 22. These words have already been quoted
in the chapter on the Sethians (I, p. 165 _supra_). Although here
attributed to Moses, they can hardly be taken from Deuteronomy, which
describes Moses’ death.]
[Footnote 10: Like the Bythos or Unknowable Father of Valentinus.]
[Footnote 11: Lit., “that the perfect being numbered is ten.”]
[Footnote 12: Lit., “all the aeons were thirty.”]
[Footnote 13: The words μετρήσας, κατέλαβεν, νοήσας here all seem to be
equivalent to “multiplied himself,” and to have been used as a play on
the double sense of the other words.]
[Footnote 14: This may possibly be an allusion to the Valentinian Horus
surrounding and guarding the Pleroma.]
[Footnote 15: Matt. xiii. 3, uses δίδωμι, “yield,” for ἐποίει as here.
Cf. Mark iv. 3, 8, ἔφερεν, “bore.” Luke viii. 3-5 stops short at a
“hundred-fold.”]
[Footnote 16: οὐκ ἔστι πάντων ἀκούσματα, “not the hearing of all.”]
[Footnote 17: See n. on previous page.]
[Footnote 18: τὸν μέσον αὐτῶν γέννημα κοινὸν ... τῶν ἐν μεσότητι Σωτῆρα
πάντων. Cruice, whom Macmahon follows, would translate “a common fruit,
a mediator ... the Saviour of all those who are in meditation”; but I
cannot make the sense out of the Greek. Miller, by transferring the
word Μαρίας to a place after μεσότητι, would make it read “through the
interposition of Mary.”]
[Footnote 19: κεκοσμημένων, perhaps “set in order or arranged.”]
[Footnote 20: Μονογενής. One of the very few instances in Gnostic
literature, where the word can be thus translated rather than as “one
of a kind,” or Unique. The explanation in parenthesis shows that it is
so intended here, but is probably of a late date.]
[Footnote 21: πῆξιν, “fixedness.”]
[Footnote 22: So the part of the _Pistis Sophia_ which is most plainly
Valentinian, has constant allusions to τριδυναμεις or triple powers.]
[Footnote 23: χαρακτῆρας, “impresses” or “marks.”]
[Footnote 24: ἄφθονον, “devoid of envy.”]
[Footnote 25: Στερεώσας οὖν κάτωθεν, καὶ διεχώρισεν ἀνὰ μέσον τοῦ
σκότους καὶ ἀνὰ μέσον τοῦ φωτός. _Firmamentum igitur quum ab imo
confirmasset, divisit per medium tenebras et per medium lucem._
Macmahon follows Cruice, but ignores the repeated ἀνὰ μέσον.]
[Footnote 26: Cf. Gen. 1. 4-7.]
[Footnote 27: ἐκτύπωμα.]
[Footnote 28: Gen. i. 1.]
[Footnote 29: See _supra_, Vol. I. p. 128, for this fiery God, there
called the Demiurge Jaldabaoth.]
[Footnote 30: A pun on βάτος, “bush,” and βατός, “passable.”]
[Footnote 31: ἀνυπόστατος, “not hypostatized.” Cruice has “_non
subsistens_.”]
[Footnote 32: This seems the only construction, unless we are to
consider that it is the Demiurge who _wilfully_ ill-treats the souls.]
[Footnote 33: ἀποψυχεῖσαι. A common pun between ψυχή, “soul,” and
ψῦχος, “cold.”]
[Footnote 34: Not in the Canon. As Cruice points out, it is from some
apocryphal book which puts it into the mouth of Job’s wife and adds
it to Job ii. 9. It is also met with in St. Chrysostom’s homily, _de
Statuis_.]
[Footnote 35: Matt. xi. 14, 15.]
[Footnote 36: This doctrine of transmigration cannot be shown to have
formed part of Valentinus’ own teaching. It appears, however, among
some of his followers. Cf. _Forerunners_, II, cc. 9, 10.]
[Footnote 37: A pun on φθαρτοί, “mortals,” and φθορά, “corruption.”]
[Footnote 38: εἰς τὸν (δέκατον) κόσμον. Cruice would omit the δέκατον.
It clearly, however, means the world of the Decad, Jesus having come
down from the “most excellent Ogdoad.”]
[Footnote 39: Evidently Hippolytus has not here any book or writing of
a particular author before him, but is giving the opinion of the sect
generally.]
[Footnote 40: Εὐηγγελίσατο. Cf. the ἐν τοῖς Εὐαγγελίοις which follows.]
[Footnote 41: John iii. 5, 6. The Greek text omits ὅτι, “because.”]
[Footnote 42: οἰκεῖος, “peculiar to.”]
[Footnote 43: This is markedly Valentinian. The Ogdoad is of course the
Highest Heaven, the Decad the middle one. See n. on p. 31 _supra_.]
[Footnote 44: He here puns again on δοκεῖν, “to seem,” and δοκός,
“beam.”]
[Footnote 45: The source of this chapter can hardly have been a written
book or MS. The style is distinctly that of Hippolytus himself; the
passion for plays on words which he has before exhibited, but has kept
under restraint while quoting from serious writers like Basilides
and Valentinus, here resumes its sway; and he adds to it a fancy for
putting several nominatives in apposition without the τουτέστι which he
has heretofore generally employed. This, and the nature of the rhetoric
all go to show that he is here quoting not from a written, but from a
spoken discourse. The author of this is of course unknown to us; and
Hippolytus, who may very likely have forgotten his name, gives us no
clue to his identity; but it is fairly clear that he must have been a
follower of Valentinus. The Three Aeons who went forth from the first
ἀρχὴ τῶν ὅλων correspond to the Nous, Logos and Anthropos who rule
over the Valentinian Ogdoad, Decad and Dodecad, and the care taken
to bring the number of Aeons up to thirty practically settles this,
while the existence of Horos is hinted at, and that of the Sophia is
barred only by the attribution of both sexes to all the Aeons. Perhaps,
however, the most striking proof of Valentinianism is the myth of all
the Aeons coalescing to produce the Jesus who brings salvation, a myth
which is not to be found in any other system. If the theory be accepted
that Hippolytus’ source for the chapter was a Valentinian sermon, the
name of Julius Cassianus as its author deserves consideration. He is
described by Clement of Alexandria (_Strom._, III, 13, sqq.) as the
founder of Docetism, and as connected with the school of Valentinus,
while certain Logia quoted by him appear also in the Valentinian
_Excerpta Theodoti_. For other particulars about him see _D.C.B._,
s.nn. “Cassianus” and “Docetism.”]
[Footnote 46: This “Monoimus Arabs” is known to no other heresiologist
save Theodoret who here as elsewhere probably copied from Hippolytus.
Salmon (_D.C.B._, s.n. “Monoimus”) suggests that the name may cover
the Jewish appellation of Menahem, which is not unlikely. His system
as here disclosed has this in common with that of the Ophites or
Naassenes of Book V that both begin with a Divine Being called “Man”
for no other assigned reason than that his manifestation here below
is known as the Son of Man. He is not, however, here called Adamas as
with the Naassenes, and the remark about his being at once father and
mother is not necessarily connected with the Naassene hymn quoted on
p. 140 Cr. For the rest, there is, _pace_ Salmon, nothing distinctly
Christian about Monoimus’ doctrine, and although the passage from
Colossians about the Pleroma dwelling in the Son of Man is here again
introduced, the context makes it possible that this is the comment of
Hippolytus rather than a direct quotation. On the other hand, Monoimus
several times speaks slightingly of those who believe that the Son
of Man was born of a woman, and he shows a reverence for the Law and
the Passover which a Christian of the second century would hardly
have exhibited. His opinions seem in fact to be more pantheistic than
Christian or Judaic, although as Macmahon truly remarks, his similes
about the Creation are not far removed from those of Philo. His remarks
about numbers have possibly been corrupted in the copy, and are
unintelligible as they stand; but it is not unlikely that they cover
some early Cabalistic notions and that his “Perfect Man” may be the
Adam Cadmon of the Cabala.]
[Footnote 47: γεγένηται μακράν, _longe abest_, Cruice, “was far
removed,” Macm.]
[Footnote 48: This line does not occur in our editions of Homer. It is
apparently a conflation of the statement in _Il._, XIV 201 that Oceanus
is the “Father of the Gods” and that in l. 246 that he is the “Father
of them all.”]
[Footnote 49: Ἦν καὶ ἐγένετο. This has been thought a quotation from
St. John’s opening chapter, but the parallel is not very close. As
Salmon (_art. cit._) points out, it signifies Being and Becoming.]
[Footnote 50: πρὸς ἑαυτήν.]
[Footnote 51: The Naassene hymn in Vol. I, p. 120 _supra_ runs: “_From_
thee comes father and _through_ thee mother, two immortal names,
parents of Aeons, O thou citizen of heaven, man of mighty name!” It
is quite possible that Hippolytus, remembering this, is merely here
repeating part of it as comment and without attributing the quotation
to Monoimus.]
[Footnote 52: Cruice points out that this κεραία or tittle is the acute
accent placed over a letter of the Greek alphabet which converts it
into a numeral. Thus, ι = Iota, ί = 10.]
[Footnote 53: Cf. Col. i. 19, “For it pleased (the Father) that in Him
the whole fulness should dwell.”]
[Footnote 54: Salmon (_art. cit._) points out that this is “at first
sight mere pantheism.” It is difficult to put any other construction
upon it.]
[Footnote 55: These six powers have been compared to Simon Magus’ six
“Roots,” which Simon also connects with the six Days of Creation. Cf.
p. 252 Cr.]
[Footnote 56: Exod. vii. 20; viii. 16.]
[Footnote 57: σχηματίζει. Macm. translates “shape.”]
[Footnote 58: δεκάπληγος. Qy. δεκάπληγμος? The word is apparently
dragged in for the sake of making a pun with πληγή, “a stroke.” Πληγμός
is a medical term for a seizure or apoplectic stroke, and probably has
the same root.]
[Footnote 59: πληγή.]
[Footnote 60: δεκάπληγος καὶ δεκάλογος.]
[Footnote 61: Salmon (_art. cit._) thinks this may have some connection
with the Quartodeciman heresy mentioned later in the book.]
[Footnote 62: So Cruice, _in omnibus istis creaturam sine fermento
mundi_, but I see no meaning in the words.]
[Footnote 63: Isa. xl. 6.]
[Footnote 64: These are the “accidents” of substance which Hippolytus
has attributed in Book VI to Pythagoras, and in Book VII to Aristotle.
See pp. 21 and 64 _supra_. According to Book VI (_ubi cit._) the [Neo-]
Pythagoreans also used the image of the tittle.]
[Footnote 65: Probably some follower of Monoimus, but not otherwise
known.]
[Footnote 66: So the Codex. Duncker and Cruice would both read σεαυτῷ,
“for thyself.”]
[Footnote 67: Of the source of this chapter little can be said.
Both the statements in the earlier part of the text and the letter
to Theophrastus bear internal marks of having been taken from real
documents. They contain also some peculiarities of diction and
construction, which would be quite consistent with their author being
an Oriental imperfectly acquainted with Greek.]
[Footnote 68: This short notice of Tatian is condensed from the almost
equally short notice of Irenæus (I, xxviii.), who seems to connect
Tatian with the sect of Encratites. Eusebius (_Hist. Eccl._, I, xvi.),
while mentioning him as a pupil of Justin, does not speak of him as
a heretic. Epiphanius (_Haer._, XLVI) follows Irenæus, and Theodoret
(_Haer. Fab._, I, xx.), Hippolytus.]
[Footnote 69: Of this Hermogenes we know already from Tertullian’s
tract against him to be found in the second volume of Oehler’s edition
of Tertullian’s works. The date of this tract is said on good authority
to be 206 or 207 A.D., and as it speaks of Hermogenes as then living,
gives us his approximate date also. It is further said that he was a
painter, probably of mythological subjects, that he lived at Carthage,
and that he was several times married. Clement of Alexandria also
mentions him, and it is suggested that both Tertullian and Clement
drew from a tract against him said by Eusebius to have been written by
Theophilus of Antioch. The heretical tenets with which he is charged
are his contention that God could not have created the world from
nothing and that Matter must therefore be co-existent with Him, that
Christ on His Ascension left His body in the Sun, and that Adam was not
saved. The first of these Tertullian would derive from Stoic teaching,
while he does not touch on the second, which is, however, recorded by
Clement, nor on the third, which Irenæus (I, xxviii) attributes to the
Encratites. It is probable, however, that all three may be derived from
the Western Asian tradition, which later gave birth to Manichæism, of
which therefore Hermogenes’ heresy may prove to have been a forecast.]
[Footnote 70: ὕλην ἄκοσμον, “unordered matter.”]
[Footnote 71: οὐσία, “substantia,” Cr. and Macm.]
[Footnote 72: Μαρτυρίᾳ δὲ χρῆται.]
[Footnote 73: Ps. xix. 4, 5, “set up his tabernacle in the Sun,” A. V.]
[Footnote 74: The probable source of this chapter has been dealt with
in the note on previous page.]
[Footnote 75: This is, I think, the first mention of the Quartodecimans
as heretics. Eusebius, who thinks that the schism on the point began
in the reign of Commodus, treats them with great tenderness, and says
(_Hist. Eccl._, cc. xxiii. and xxiv.), that “the Churches of all
Asia” held their opinions, and that Irenæus himself pleaded their
cause before Pope Victor. Epiphanius (_Haer._, XXX) says that they
derived their origin from a mixture of the Phrygian and Quintillian or
Priscillianist sects, probably confusing them with the Montanists.]
[Footnote 76: Gal. v. 3.]
[Footnote 77: This heresy of the “Phrygians” is, of course, that
generally called the Montanist, which seems to have broken out
about the year 180. For some time it was not violently opposed by
the orthodox, and Tertullian himself became a convert to it and
probably died in its confession. Later it came to be looked upon as
an enemy only one degree less prejudicial to the Catholic Church than
Gnosticism, and therefore one to be stamped out by excommunication in
pre-Constantinian times, and by persecution afterwards. Its tenets are
sufficiently summarised in our text for a general understanding of
them and their connection with later forms of Patripassianism; but any
one wishing to go further into the subject is recommended to read Dr.
Salmon’s able article on “Montanus” in _D.C.B._, which will give him
all that is really known as to the sect and its tendencies. Its centre
seems to have been always Asia Minor.]
[Footnote 78: ταῦτα τὰ γύναια. The phrase is Aristotelian. Cf. same
word later on same page.]
[Footnote 79: χάρισμα.]
[Footnote 80: ξηροφαγίας καὶ ράφανοφαγίας. First phrase, “dry food.”]
[Footnote 81: There is no reason to believe that in what he says here
Hippolytus is drawing from any written document. As the Montanists on
being condemned by the rest of the Church appealed first to the Gallic
Churches in which Hippolytus’ master Irenæus was a leading spirit, and
later to the Church of Rome, all that he says about them must have been
familiar to his hearers without referring to any earlier writers.]
[Footnote 82: Ἐγκρατῖται, from ἐγκρατεῖς, “the continent ones.”
Many Gnostic sects, _e. g._ those of Saturninus and Marcion seem
to have been called Encratites, the reason given by themselves for
their abstinence being the malignity of matter. But it is plain from
Hippolytus’ statement as to the orthodoxy in other matters of those he
describes, that these were not Gnostics, but Catholics who practised
asceticism inordinately. This is doubtless his reason for quoting St.
Paul against them and for ignoring Irenæus’ statement that Tatian
was their founder, that they taught a system of Aeons and denied the
salvation of Adam. Bearing in mind that he thought the Docetae to be an
independent sect, it seems probable that in this Book he intended to
turn his back upon the Gnostics and to describe only the other sects
with a closer resemblance to orthodox Judaism and Christianity. The
whole work would thus form a roughly graduated scale extending from
the undisguised heathenism of the Ophites to the purely theological
errors of Callistus, the description of which seems designed to form
the climax of the book. The fact that it was probably, as said in the
Introduction, begun, laid aside, and then taken up again and finished,
is sufficient to account for discrepancies like that involved in the
concluding sentence of this Book.]
[Footnote 83: πεφυσιωμένοι. Cf. the Φυσιώσεις of 2 Cor. xii. 20.]
[Footnote 84: τῆς ὑγαινούσης διδασκαλίας. The N.T. substitutes πιστέως,
“faith,” for “teaching,” and omits the adjective.]
[Footnote 85: 1 Tim. iv. 1-5, _verbatim_ save as in last note.]
[Footnote 86: It follows from this that Hippolytus is indebted to no
other writer than himself for the facts in this chapter.]
[Footnote 87: Νοαχιτῶν. The Codex has Νοχαϊτων.]
[Footnote 88: The Cainites are described by Irenæus (I, xxxi) as
anterior to Valentinus. The Noachites are mentioned by no other writer.
It is difficult to account for the remarks of Hippolytus about the
Ophites in this passage in view of the fact that the greater part of
Book V has been devoted to the doctrines of the “Naassenes”--a word
which he evidently recognized as identical with “Ophites.” Unless we
are to believe that Ὀφιτῶν is here a copyist’s error for the name of
some other sect, we are almost compelled to accept the theory given
in the Introduction, _i. e._ that the materials for Book V only came
into Hippolytus’ hands after the rest of the book was written, and that
their heresy was then suddenly pitchforked into the place in which we
find it without due consideration of its accord with passages like the
present. In that case the “seven Books before this” on p. 397 Cr. must
originally have read “five,” unless we are to suppose that their place
was occupied by the description of the Jewish sects later transferred
to Book IX.]
[Sidenote: p. 424.] BOOK IX
NOETUS, CALLISTUS, AND OTHERS
1. These are the contents of the 9th (Book) of the Refutation of All
Heresies.
2. What is the blasphemous folly of Noetus and that he gave heed to the
doctrines of Heraclitus the Obscure and not to those of Christ.
3. And how Callistus having mingled the heresy of Cleomenes, Noetus’
disciple, with that of Theodotus, set up another and newer heresy, and
what was his life.
4. What was the fresh invasion[1] of the stranger spirit Elchesai and
that he covers his own transgressions by appearing to keep to the Law,
while he in fact devotes himself to Gnostic opinions [entirely], or to
astrological and magical ones in addition.
5. What are the customs of the Jews and how many their differences.
* * * * *
6. A long fight has now been fought by us concerning all [early]
heresies, and we have left nothing unrefuted. There still remains the
greatest fight of all, [to wit] to [Sidenote: p. 425.] thoroughly
describe and refute the heresies risen up in our own day, by means
whereof certain unlearned and daring men have attempted to scatter the
Church to the winds, [thereby] casting the greatest confusion among
all the faithful throughout the world. For it seems fit that we should
attack the opinion which was the first cause of [these] evils and
expose its roots, so that its offshoots, being thoroughly known to all,
may be contemned.
1. _About Noetus._
7. There was a certain man, Noetus[2] by name, by birth a Smyrnæan.
He introduced a heresy from the opinions of Heraclitus. Of which
[Noetus], a certain man named Epigonus becomes the minister and pupil,
and on his arrival at Rome sowed broadcast the godless doctrine.
Whose teaching Cleomenes, by life and manners alien to the Church,
confirmed, when he had become his disciple.[3] [Sidenote: p. 426.] At
that time Zephyrinus, an ignorant and greedy man, thought that he ruled
the Church, and, persuaded by the gain offered, gave leave to those
coming to him to learn of Cleomenes.[4] And himself also being in time
beguiled, ran into the same errors, his fellow-counsellor and comrade
in this wickedness being Callistus, whose life and the heresy invented
by him, I shall shortly set forth. The school of these successive
[teachers] continued to grow stronger and increased through the help
given to it by Zephyrinus and Callistus. Yet we never yielded, but
many times withstood them to the face, refuted them, and compelled
them perforce to confess the truth. They being ashamed for a season,
and being brought by the truth to confession, before long returned to
wallowing in the same mire.[5]
8. But since we have pointed out the genealogical succession of these
[men], it appears left to us to set forth their evil mode of teaching
their doctrines. The opinions of Heraclitus the Obscure being first
explained, we shall then make evident the parts of [their doctrines]
which are [Sidenote: p. 427.] Heraclitan, but which, perhaps, the
present chiefs of the heresy do not know to be those of the Obscure,
but think to be those of Christ. Should they meet with these [words],
they might, thus being put to shame, cease from their godless
blasphemy.[6] And although the teachings of Heraclitus have been
before expounded by us in this [our] _Philosophumena_,[7] yet it seems
expedient to repeat them now, so that by their closer refutation, those
who think they are disciples of Christ may be plainly taught that they
are not His, but are those of the Obscure.
9. Now Heraclitus says that the All is (one),[8] divided [and]
undivided, originated [and] unoriginated, mortal [and] immortal, reason
[and] eternity,[9] Father [and] Son, a just God. “It is wise,” says
Heraclitus, “that those who listen, not to me, but to reason,[10]
should acknowledge all things to be one.” And because all men do not
know nor acknowledge this, he reproves them somehow thus: “They do
not understand how anything that is diverse can agree [Sidenote: p.
428.] with itself. It is an inverse harmony, like that of a bow and a
lyre.” But that the All is ever Reason[11] and exists by it, he thus
declares:--“That this Reason ever exists, men do not understand either
before they hear it or when they hear it first. For while all things
come to pass according to this Reason, they seem to be ignorant of
it, although they seem to have attempted endlessly[12] by words and
deeds such a description as I now give by analysis of their nature
and by saying how things are.” But that the All is a Son and for ever
an eternal being of the universals, he says thus: “A boy playing at
tables[13] is Eternity; the kingdom is a boy’s.” That he is father
of all things that have been generated, begotten and unbegotten, the
creation and [its] Demiurge, we have his saying: “War is father of
[Sidenote: p. 429.] all, but king of all; and it displays some men
as gods, others as men; some it makes slaves, others free. Because
[this][14] is a harmony like that of bow and lyre.” But that the
unapparent, the unseen and unknown by men is [better],[15] he says in
these words: “An unapparent harmony is better than an apparent.” He
thus commends and admires that which is unknown to him before that
which is known, and the invisible before that which can be [seen]. And
that it is to be seen of men and is not undiscoverable, he says in
these words: “Whatever sight, hearing [and] learning can receive,[16]
I honour before all,” he says, that is, [I prefer][17] the things seen
to those unseen. From such phrases of his it is easy to comprehend his
argument. He says that men are deceived in regard to the knowledge of
things apparent like Homer, who was the wisest of all the Greeks. For
children when killing lice, tricked him by [Sidenote: p. 430.] saying:
“What we see and clutch we leave behind; but what we neither see nor
clutch, we take away with us.”
10. Thus Heraclitus supposes the apparent to have an equal lot and
honour with the unapparent, as if the apparent and the unapparent were
admittedly one. “For,” he says, “an unapparent harmony is better than
an apparent,” and “Whatever sight, hearing [and] learning [these are
the organs] can receive, this, he says, I honour above all,” thus not
honouring by preference the unapparent. And so Heraclitus says that
neither darkness nor light, nor good nor evil are different,[18] but
are one and the same. Therefore he blames Hesiod that he did not know
Day and Night, for Day and Night, he says, are one, speaking somehow
like this: “Hesiod is the teacher of most things, and they feel sure
that he knew most things, who did not [however] know Day and Night. For
they are one.” And [as to] good and evil:--“Now the surgeons,” says
Heraclitus, “usually cut, burn, and in every way torture the sick,
and complain that they receive from them no fitting reward for their
labours, although they do these good works on [Sidenote: p. 431.] the
diseases.” And both straight and crooked, he says, are the same. “The
way of wool-carders, he says, is both straight and crooked, [because]
the revolution of the tool called _cochleus_[19] is both straight and
crooked; for it revolves and moves upwards at the same time. It is,
he says, one and the same.” And upward and downward are, he says, one
and the same: “The way up and down is one and the same.” And he says
that the polluted and the pure are one and the same, and the drinkable
and the undrinkable also. “The sea,” he says, “is at once the purest
and the most polluted water, for to fish it is drinkable and salutary,
but to man undrinkable and hurtful.”[20] And in the same way, he says,
admittedly the immortal is mortal and the mortal immortal, in such
words as these: “Deathless are mortals, and mortals are deathless, when
the living take death from these, and the dead life from those.” But
he speaks here of the resurrection of this visible flesh [Sidenote: p.
432.] wherein we have been born. And he knows God to be the cause of
this resurrection, saying thus: “Those here will rise again and will
become the busy guardians of living and dead.” And he says also that
the judgment of the ordered world and of all therein will be by fire,
speaking thus: “Thunder governs all things,” that is, it corrects them,
meaning by “thunder” the everlasting fire. But he says also that this
fire is discerning and the cause of the government of the universals,
and he calls it Need[21] and Satiety. Now Need is according to him the
Ordering [of the world],[22] but Satiety the Ecpyrosis. For “Fire,” he
says, “coming suddenly will judge and seize all things.”[23]
In this chapter [entitled] “All Things Together,” the peculiar thought
of Heraclitus is set forth.[24] But I have also shown briefly that
it is that of Noetus’ heresy, he being a disciple not of Christ, but
of Heraclitus. For that the created world was its own Demiurge and
creator, he declares thus: “God is day and night, winter and summer,
war and peace, satiety and hunger.” “All things are contraries.” This
is the thought “but there is a change, as when one [Sidenote: p. 433.]
incense is mixed with others; which [incense] is named according to the
pleasure of each.”
But it is plain to all that the intelligent[25] successors of Noetus
and the chiefs of the heresy, although you may say that they were not
[actual] hearers of Heraclitus, yet by openly choosing[26] the opinions
of Noetus, acknowledge the same things. For they say this: One and the
same God is the Father and Demiurge of all, having been pleased, though
invisible, to appear to the righteous men of old. For when He is not
seen He is invisible [but when seen visible].[27] And when He wishes
to be uncontained, He is uncontainable,[28] and when He is contained,
He is containable. Thus by the same reasoning, He is unconquerable[29]
[and conquerable], unbegotten [and begotten], immortal and mortal. How
can such as they be shown not to be disciples of Heraclitus? Did not
the Obscure long ago philosophize in these very words?
Now that [Noetus] says the Father and Son are the same, no one is
ignorant. These are his words. When, then, the Father had not been
born, He was rightly proclaimed Father. And when He was pleased to
undergo [Sidenote: p. 434.] birth, He having been begotten, became the
Son of Himself and not of another. For thus [Noetus] seems to establish
Monarchia[30] by asserting the Father and the Son so-called are one
and the same, not another from another, but Himself from Himself. And
that He is called by the name of Father [or Son] according to the
change of times. But that One was He who appeared and underwent birth
from a Virgin and dwelt as a man among men. And acknowledged Himself
to those who saw Him to be a Son by reason of the birth that had taken
place, but did not conceal from those who could receive it that He was
also Father. And that He also suffered, being nailed to the Tree and
gave up His Spirit to Himself, and died and did not die. And that He
raised Himself again the third day after having been buried in a tomb
and pierced with a spear and nailed with nails. This One Cleomenes and
his band say was God and Father of the universals, thereby drawing a
Heraclitan darkness over many.[31]
2. _About Callistus._
11. To this heresy Callistus[32] gave strength--a man artful in evil
and versatile in falsehood, who was seeking after the [Sidenote: p.
435.] bishop’s throne. And he led whither he liked Zephyrinus,[33]
an ignorant man, unlearned and unskilled in the Church’s rules, whom
[Callistus] persuaded by gifts and extravagant demands. [And as
Zephyrinus] was a receiver of bribes and a money-lover, he induced
him to be ever making faction between the brethren, while he himself
by crafty words contrived that at the last both parties should be
friendly to himself. And sometimes he deceived those who thought truly,
by saying that he thought for his own part like things with them; and
again he said likewise to those [who held] the opinions of Sabellius,
whom, when he might have brought him into the right way, he abandoned.
For Sabellius did not harden [his heart] to our[34] admonitions, but
when he got alone with Callistus, he was urged by him to relapse
towards the doctrine of Cleomenes, alleging that he was of like
opinions. [Sabellius] did not then understand his trickery, but knew it
afterwards, as I will shortly explain.[35]
Now [Callistus] bringing forward Zephyrinus himself, persuaded him to
say publicly: “I know one God, Christ Jesus, [Sidenote: p. 436.] and
beside Him I know no other, begotten and susceptible of suffering.”
And at one time he said: “The Father did not die but the Son,” and
thus maintained without ceasing the faction among the people.[36]
Knowing whose designs, we did not give way to him, but refuted and
withstood him for the Truth’s sake. He also, advancing towards madness,
through everyone concurring with him--though we did not--called us
ditheists,[37] thus violently spitting forth the concealed poison
within him. It seems good to us then to set forth the lovable[38] life
of this man since he was born at the same time as ourselves, in order
that by the mode of life of such a one being made apparent, the heresy
which he has taken in hand may become well and quickly known to those
who have right mind. He bore witness[39] when Fuscianus was Prefect of
Rome;[40] and the manner of his martyrdom was on this wise.
12. [Callistus] chanced to be a house-slave of a certain
Carpophorus,[41] a man of the faith who was of Cæsar’s household. To
him as to one of the faith Carpophorus entrusted no little money on
his promising to bring in profit from the business of a money-dealer.
Who taking it, set up a money-changer’s stall in the place called
the _Piscina Publica_,[42] to whom in course of time not a few
deposits were entrusted by [Sidenote: p. 437.] widows and brethren
on the strength of Carpophorus’ name. But he having made everything
disappear,[43] was in difficulties. When he had done this, one[44] was
not lacking to tell Carpophorus; and Carpophorus said that he required
accounts from him. Callistus being aware of this and suspecting danger
from his master,[45] took flight and made for the sea. Who finding a
ship at Portus[46] ready to sail when she should have her cargo, went
on board intending to sail. But he could not thus escape; for one was
not lacking to tell Carpophorus what had happened. And he having halted
at the harbour according to the news given him, tried to hurry to the
ship. But she was lying in the middle of the harbour, and the ferryman
being slow, Callistus saw his master afar off, and knew that as he was
in the ship he would be taken. So he disregarded life and thinking
that his end had come, cast himself into the sea.[47] But the sailors,
jumping down into the boats, dragged him out [Sidenote: p. 438.]
against his will amid a great shouting from the shore. And thus he was
handed over to his master and taken away to Rome, whence his master
sentenced him to the _Pistrinum_.[48]
But time having gone on, some brethren, as generally happens, came
forward and besought Carpophorus that he would set free the runaway
from punishment, affirming that he had admitted having gold laid up
with certain persons.[49] And Carpophorus like a pious man said that
he did not care about his own [money], but that he was concerned about
the deposits. For many cried to him with tears that they had trusted
to his name when confiding money to Callistus, and [Carpophorus] being
persuaded, ordered him to be released. But he having nothing to pay
back and not being able to run away again because he was watched,
devised a scheme for [obtaining] death. On a Sabbath day, pretending to
go forth to his debtors, he rushed into the synagogue of the assembled
Jews, and stayed there factiously opposing them.[50] But when they
were factiously opposed by him, they abused and rained blows upon him
and haled him before Fuscianus, who was then Prefect of the City. And
this was their accusation:--“The Romans have conceded to us the right
to read aloud publicly the laws of our fathers. But this man coming
in forbade it, making a [Sidenote: p. 439.] faction against us, and
affirming that he was a Christian.” And as Fuscianus chanced to be on
the judgment-seat, and was angered by the words of the Jews against
Callistus, one was not lacking to tell Carpophorus what was being done.
And he, hastening to the judgment-seat, cried out to the Prefect, “I
beseech you, O Lord Fuscianus, do not believe this man, for he is not a
Christian, but seeks occasion of death, having made away[51] with much
money of mine, as I will prove.”[52] But the Jews thinking this to be a
fetch, as if Carpophorus were seeking by this speech to get him set at
liberty, cried out against him to the Prefect with increased fury. And
he being moved by them, had [Callistus] scourged and sent him to a mine
in Sardinia.
But after a time, there being other martyrs there, Marcia, being a
God-loving woman and a concubine of Commodus [Sidenote: p. 440.] and
having wished to do some good work, summoned before her the blessed
Victor, who was Bishop of the Church at that time,[53] and enquired
what martyrs there were in Sardinia. And he gave her the names of all,
but did not give her that of Callistus, knowing what he had dared to
do. Then Marcia, having succeeded in her petition to Commodus, gave
the liberating letter to an elder named Hyacinthus, a eunuch,[54]
who took it and sailed for Sardinia, and having handed it to the
Administrator[55] of the place for the time being, set free all the
martyrs with the exception of Callistus. But he, on his knees and
weeping, besought that he also might be set free. Then Hyacinthus
was moved by entreaty and required the Administrator [to do this]
affirming that he was the foster-father of Marcia and arranging to
hold the Administrator harmless. And he being persuaded [in turn]
set free Callistus also.[56] Upon whose coming [to Rome], Victor was
much annoyed at what had befallen; but, as he was a compassionate
man, held his peace. But to guard against the reproach of many--for
[Sidenote: p. 441.] the audacities of Callistus were not a long way
off--and Carpophorus was still an obstacle, he sends him to abide in
Antium, making him a certain monthly allowance for his support.[57]
After [Victor’s] falling asleep, Zephyrinus having had [Callistus]
as a coadjutor in the management of the clergy, honoured him to his
own detriment, and sending for him from Antium, set him over the
cemetery.[58] And Callistus being ever with [Zephyrinus], and as I have
said before, serving him with guile,[59] put him in the background[60]
as neither able to judge what was said to him nor to comprehend all
the counsels of Callistus when talking to him of what things pleased
him. Thus, after the death of Zephyrinus, [Callistus] thinking that
he had succeeded in his pursuit,[61] put away Sabellius as one who
does not hold right opinions. For [Callistus] was afraid of me and
deemed that he could thus wipe off the charge [against him] before the
Churches,[62] just as if he held no different opinions from theirs.
Now Callistus was a sorcerer[63] and a trickster and in time [Sidenote:
p. 442.] snatched away many. And harbouring the poison in his heart,
and devising nothing straight, besides being ashamed to declare
the truth because he had reproached us in public, saying: “Ye are
ditheists,”[64] but especially because he had often been accused by
Sabellius of having strayed from his first faith, he invented some
such heresy as this:--He says that the Word is the Son and that He is
also the Father, being called by that name, but being one undivided
Spirit.[65] And that the Father is not one thing and the Son another;
but that they subsist [as] one and the same. And that all things above
and below are filled with the Divine Spirit, and that the Spirit which
was incarnate in the Virgin was not other than the Father, but one and
the same. And that this is the saying: “Dost thou not believe that I am
in the Father and the Father in Me?”[66] For that which is seen, which
is a man, that is the Son; but the Spirit which is contained in the
Son, that is the Father. “For I do not,” [Sidenote: p. 443.] he says,
“say that there are two Gods, Father and Son, but One. For the Father
who existed in Him, having taken on Him the flesh, made it God by union
with Himself and made it one [Being] so that He is called Father and
Son, one God. And that this [God] being one Person cannot be two.”[67]
And so he said that the Father had suffered _with_ the Son; for he did
not like to say that the Father suffered and was One Person, [so as]
to avoid[68] blasphemy against the Father. [Thus this] senseless and
shifty fellow, scattering blasphemies high and low, so that he may
only seem [not] to speak against the Truth, is not ashamed to lean now
towards the doctrine of Sabellius and now towards that of Theodotus.[69]
The sorcerer having dared such things, set up a school against that
of the Church,[70] thus to teach. And first he contrived to make
concessions to men in respect of their pleasures, telling every one
that their sins were remitted by himself. For if any one who has been
received[71] by another and calls himself Christian should transgress,
he says, the transgression of him will not be reckoned against him if
he hastens to the school of Callistus. And many were pleased with this
proposition,[72] having been stricken with conscience as well as cast
out of many heresies. And [Sidenote: p. 444.] some even after having
been cast by us out of the Church by a [regular] judgment, joining with
these last, filled the school of Callistus. He laid it down that if
[even] a bishop commits any sin, though it should be one unto death, he
ought not to be deposed. In his time bishops and priests and deacons
who had married twice and even thrice began to keep their places among
the clergy.[73] For if any one who was in the clerical order[74] should
marry, he [decided] that he should remain in the order as if he had not
sinned, saying that what was spoken by the Apostle was said with regard
to this [viz.:] “Who art thou that judgest another man’s servant?”[75]
And also the Parable of the Tares, he says spoke as to this: “Let the
tares grow to the harvest,”[76] that is, let the sinners remain in
the Church. But he also said that the ark of Noah was made into an
image[77] of the Church, wherein were dogs and wolves and crows and all
clean and unclean [animals]. Thus, he affirms, ought the Church to do
likewise; and as many things as he could bring together on this point,
he thus interpreted.
Whose hearers being attracted by these doctrines continue [to exist],
deluding themselves and many others, crowds of [Sidenote: p. 445.]
whom flock into the school. Wherefore they are multiplied and rejoice
in the crowds, by reason of the pleasures which Christ did not permit.
Whom slightly regarding, they forbid no one to sin, affirming that they
themselves remit sins to those with whom they are well pleased. For
[Callistus] has also permitted women, if they, being unmarried and in
the prime of life, turned towards some one unworthy of their station,
or did not wish to lessen it by [marriage], to hold any bedfellow they
might choose as lawfully married to them, whether he was a house slave
or free,[78] and to consider this person although not married by law as
in the place of a husband.[79] From this the so-called faithful women
began to make attempts with abortifacient drugs and to gird themselves
tightly so that they might cast out what they had conceived, through
their not wishing on account of their family or superabundant wealth to
have a child by a slave or some mean person. See now what impiety the
lawless one has reached when he teaches [Sidenote: p. 446.] adultery
and murder at the same time! And in the face of these audacities the
shameless ones attempt to call themselves a Catholic Church, and some
think that they do well to join with them.
Under this [Callistus, too], a second baptism has been ventured upon by
them for the first time.[80] These things the most amazing Callistus
has set on foot, whose school still persists and preserves the customs
and tradition [of the Church], nor does it discriminate as to whom it
should hold communion with, but offers communion indiscriminately to
all. From whom also they are called by a name that they share with him,
and, by reason of the protagonist of such works being Callistus, are
called Callistians.[81]
3. _Concerning Elchesaites._[82]
13. When the teaching of this [Callistus] had been dispersed [Sidenote:
p. 447.] over the whole world, a certain man called Alcibiades dwelling
at Apamea in Syria, who was crafty and full of impudence, and having
looked into the matter, deemed himself more forcible and expert in
tricks than Callistus, arrived in Rome bringing with him a book.[83] He
pretended that a righteous man (called) Elchasai, had received the same
from the Seres[84] of Parthia and gave it to one called Sobiae,[85]
as having been revealed by an angel. The height of which angel was 24
schoeni,[86] which is 96 miles; but the girth was 4 schoeni, and from
shoulder to shoulder 6 schoeni; and his footprints were 3½ schoeni
in length, which is 14 miles,[87] their width 1½ schoeni, and their
depth half a schoenus. And that there was with him also a female whose
measure, he says, accorded with those aforesaid. And that the male
is the Son of God, and that the female is called the Holy Spirit.
Describing these portents, he is wont to distract the foolish by this
address: “A new remission of sins was brought as good news to men in
the third year of the reign of Trajan.” And he prescribes (therefore) a
baptism which I will explain (later). He affirms that of those wrapped
in all licentiousness and pollution and breaches of the Law, if any
such be a believer and turns again and hearkens to and believes on
the book, he determines [Sidenote: p. 448.] that he shall receive by
baptism remission of sins.
These tricks he audaciously elaborated, starting from the doctrine
before described which Callistus had brought forward. For he, having
understood that many rejoiced at such an announcement,[88] thought
that his enterprise would be timely.[89] Yet we withstood him also,
and did not permit very many to go astray, refuting them[90] [with
the argument] that this was the work of a spurious[91] spirit and of
a puffed-up heart; and that the man like a wolf had risen up among
the many stray sheep which the false guide Callistus had scattered
abroad. But, since we have begun, we shall not be silent regarding
the doctrines of this man also; and we shall bring to light the (mode
of) life (he advocates),[92] and shall then prove that his supposed
discipline is a make-believe. And then again I will explain the chief
of his sayings, so that the reader who has studied [Sidenote: p. 449.]
his writings may know thoroughly what and of what quality is the heresy
on which he has ventured.
14. He puts forward as a bait, conformity with the Law,[93] claiming
that those who have believed ought to be circumcised and to live
according to the Law while clutching at something from the heresies
aforesaid. And he says that Christ was a man born in the way common to
all; and that He was not now begotten for the first time from a virgin,
but that both in the first instance and then many times since, He had
been begotten and born, appeared and grown up, alternating births and
changing one body for another, wherein He makes use of the Pythagorean
teaching.[94] But [the Elchesaites] are so vainglorious as to say
that they themselves foretell the future, starting evidently from the
measures and numbers of the Pythagorean art before described. And
they give heed to mathematics and astrology and magic as if they were
true, and they use these things to astonish the weak-minded, so that
they may think themselves partakers in a mighty matter. They give also
incantations and spells[95] to those bitten by dogs and to possessed
and other diseased persons concerning which we [Sidenote: p. 450.]
shall not be silent. Having then sufficiently detailed the sources and
causes of their audacities, I will proceed to repeat their writings,
whereby the reader may know at once their folly and their godless
endeavours.
15. To his catechumens, then, [Alcibiades] administers baptism,
speaking such words as these to those whom he deceives: “If, therefore,
any one has gone in unto a child, or to any kind of animal, or to a
male or to a brother or to a daughter, or has committed adultery or
fornication, and wishes to receive remission of sins, immediately he
hears this book, let him be baptized a second time in the name of the
Great and Highest God and in the name of His Son, the Great King.
And let him be purified and be chaste and call to witness the seven
witnesses who are written in this book [to wit], the Heaven and the
Water, and the Holy Spirit and the Angel of Prayer and the oil and
the salt and the Earth.”[96] These are the wonderful mysteries of
Elchasai, the hidden and great things which he hands [Sidenote: p.
451.] down to the disciples who are worthy. And the lawless one is not
content with these, but before two or three witnesses puts the seal on
his own crimes, again speaking thus: “I say again, O adulterers and
adulteresses and false prophets, if you wish to turn again so that your
sins may be remitted unto you, peace shall be yours, and a portion with
the just, if immediately you hearken to this book and are baptized a
second time with your garments.”
But since we have said that these persons use incantations over those
bitten by dogs and over others, we shall point out [these also].
Thus he speaks: “If a furious and mad dog in whom is the breath of
death,[97] bite or tear or touch any man or woman or man-child or
maid-child, in the same hour let [the bitten one] run with all his
clothing and go down to a river or a pool where there is a deep place,
and let him be baptized there with all his clothing, and let him
pray[98] to the Great and Highest God in faith of heart, and then call
to witness the Seven Witnesses who are written [Sidenote: p. 452.] in
this book, saying: ‘Lo! I call to witness the Heaven and the Water
and the Holy Spirit and the Angel of Prayer and the oil and the salt
and the Earth. I call to witness these Seven Witnesses that I will no
more sin, nor commit adultery, nor steal, nor do injustice, nor be
greedy, nor cherish hatred, nor break faith, nor take pleasure in any
evil deeds.’ Then upon saying this, let him be baptized with all his
clothing in the name of the Great and Highest God.”
16. But in most other matters he talks nonsense, and teaches [the
repetition of] the same spells over the phthisical, and the baptizing
of them in cold water forty times a week. And in the same way with
those possessed of devils. O wisdom inimitable and incantations filled
full of powers! Who will not be struck at such and so great a power of
words? But since we have said that they also make use of the error of
the astrologers, let us prove this out of their own mouths. Thus he
says: “There are evil stars of impiety. This is now spoken unto you, O
God-fearing [Sidenote: p. 453.] men[99] and disciples. Beware of the
days of their authority,[100] and begin no works on these days, and
baptize not man nor woman in the days of their authority when the moon
goes forth with them and journeys with them.[101] Be ye ware from that
day until the moon leaves them utterly and then baptize and begin in
every beginning of your works. Honour also the Sabbath Day for it is
one day out of these.[102] But beware of beginning ought in the third
day from the Sabbath, because when three years of the reign of Trajan
Cæsar were fulfilled, he brought the Parthians under his sway.[103] And
when three years more are completed war will rage between the angels of
the impiety of the North,[104] and thereby all the kingdoms of iniquity
will be troubled.”[105]
17. Since, now, he believes it would be unreasonable that these great
and secret mysteries should be trampled [Sidenote: p. 454.] underfoot
or delivered to many, he advises that they should be preserved as if
they were costly pearls,[106] saying thus: “Read not these words to
all men and keep their commandments carefully, since not all men are
faithful nor all women straight.” But these things neither the sages of
the Egyptians, nor Pythagoras the sage of the Greeks withdrew within
their sanctuaries. For had Elchasai chanced to live at the time, what
need would there have been for Pythagoras, or Thales, or Solon, or
Plato the wise, or the rest of the Greeks to learn of the priests of
the Egyptians, seeing that they would have had so much and so great
wisdom from Alcibiades, the most wonderful interpreter of the wretched
Elchasai? Now therefore it seems that enough has been said for persons
of sound mind to have a complete knowledge of the madness of these
[heretics], wherefore it does not seem fit to make use of any more of
their sayings, which are many and laughable.
But since we have not passed over the things which have sprung up among
ourselves, and have not been silent on those which [happened] before
our time, it seems proper, so that we may go into everything and leave
nothing unexpounded, to say something of the [customs] of the Jews
[Sidenote: p. 455.] also, and what are the differences among them; for
I think that up till now this has been passed over.[107] [And] when
I shall have spoken of these,[108] I shall proceed to the exposition
of the Word of Truth.[109] So that after the lengthy struggle of the
discourse against all heresies, we, firmly pressing forward to the
crown of the kingdom, and believing on the things which are true, may
not be confounded.[110]
4. _Jews._[111]
18. Originally there was one nation of Jews. For one teacher had been
given them by God [namely] Moses, and through him was given one Law.
And there was one desert and one mountain [namely] Sinai; for one God
was their legislator. But after they had crossed the river Jordan
and had divided by lot the land won by the spear, they rent asunder
in different ways the Law of God, each understanding the precepts
differently. And thus they set up teachers for themselves and found
out heretical opinions and advanced in schism. Whose diversity I shall
set forth; but although for a long time they have been scattered in
many divisions, yet I will expose [only] the chief of them, whence the
lovers of learning[112] may easily know the rest. [Sidenote: p. 456.]
For three sects[113] are distinguished among them, and the adherents of
one of these are Pharisees, of another Sadducees, and the others[114]
are Essenes. These [last] practise the more holy life [of the three],
loving one another and observing continence. And they turn away from
every deed of concupiscence, holding it hateful even to listen to such
things. They renounce marriage, but take the children of others and
bring them up in their customs, thus adopting[115] them and impelling
them to the sciences, [but] not forbidding them to marry, although they
themselves abstain from it. But they admit no women, even those who are
willing to devote themselves to the same policy, nor give heed to them,
for they distrust women altogether.
19. And they despise wealth and do not shrink from sharing with those
who lack [it], although none of them is richer than another. For it
is a law among them that any one entering the heresy must sell his
possessions and offer [Sidenote: p. 457.] the price to the common
stock, which the ruler receives and distributes to all for their needs.
Thus there is no want among them. And they use not oil, thinking
anointing their bodies pollution. But there are stewards appointed by
vote who look after all their property in common, and all of them wear
white garments always.
20. And there is not one city of them, but many of them dwell in every
city. And if one of the practisers of the heresy[116] should arrive
from a strange country, they hold all things in common for him, and
those whom they knew not before they receive as guests and intimates.
And they travel about their native land, and when they go on a journey
they carry nothing with them except arms. And they have in every city a
ruler who spends what is collected for the purpose of providing clothes
and food for them. And their dress and its fashion are modest. They
do not possess two tunics or a double set of footgear; but when those
in use become old, they take others. And they neither buy nor sell
anything at all; but if one possesses ought, he gives it to him who
lacks, and what he has not, he receives [in its stead].[117]
[Sidenote: p. 458.] 21. But they lead a well-ordered and regular
life, and always pray at dawn, not speaking before they have praised
God. And thus they all go forth and do what work they will, and after
working until the fifth hour, leave off. Then, assembling again in
one place, they gird themselves with linen cinctures so as to conceal
their privities, and thus wash in cold water. And after having thus
purified themselves, they gather together in one dwelling--but no one
who thinks differently from them is with them in the house--and they
get to breakfast. And sitting down in order, they are offered bread
in silence, and then some one kind of food from which each has a
sufficient portion. But none of them tastes anything till the priest
has blessed and prayed over it. And after breakfast, when he has again
prayed, they offer up praises to God. Then, laying aside as holy the
garments with which they are clothed while indoors--and these are
of linen--and receiving again the [Sidenote: p. 459.] others in the
vestibule, they hasten to their favourite work until the afternoon. And
they take supper in all respects as before described. And none ever
shouts, nor is any other uproarious sound heard, but each one speaks
quietly, every one decently yielding the conversation to the other,
so that to those without the silence of those within seems somewhat
of a mystery. And they are at all times sober, eating and drinking
everything by measure.[118]
22. Now all give heed to the president[119] and what he commands they
obey as law. For they are zealous to pity and help the downtrodden.
And before all things they abstain from rage and anger and such-like,
judging that these betray mankind. And none takes oath to the other,
but what each one says is judged stronger than an oath. And if any
one takes an oath, he is condemned as one not to be believed (without
God).[120] And they are diligent concerning the recital of the Law
and the Prophets, and also if [Sidenote: p. 460.] there should be any
summary[121] [of these] [made by one] of the faithful, [they listen to
it?] And they are very curious concerning plants and stones, being very
inquisitive as to their operation, as they think that these did not
come into being in vain.
23. But to those who wish to become disciples of the heresy, they do
not straightway impart the traditions, until they have first made trial
of them. For a year they set before them the same sort of food as
[is served] to themselves, but outside their assembly and in another
house. And they give them a hatchet and the linen cincture and white
garments. When they have during this period given proof of continence,
they draw nearer to the way of living [of the others] and are purified
more thoroughly than at first, but they do not take their food with
them. For after they have shown that they can practise continence,
for another two years’ trial is made of such a one’s character, and
on his appearing worthy, he is adjudged so [to be received] by them.
Before, however, he can eat with them, he is sworn with fearful oaths;
first, that he will show piety towards the Divine, then that he will
observe justice towards men, and will in no way wrong any, nor hate
anyone who [Sidenote: p. 461.] wrongs him or who is an enemy to him,
but will pray for him. And that he will fight on the side of the just
and will keep faith with all, especially with those who bear sway, nor
be disobedient to them. For it happens to none to rule save by God. And
if [the aspirant] should bear rule, that he will never be arrogant in
authority, nor make more use than is customary of any ornament; but is
to love the truth, [Sidenote: p. 462.] to refute the liar, and not to
steal, nor soil his conscience with unlawful gain, nor hide ought from
his fellow-heretics. And will tell nothing [of their secrets] to others
even if he shall suffer violence unto death. Besides this, he swears to
them to impart none of the doctrines [of the sect] otherwise than as he
himself received them. By such oaths, therefore, do they bind those who
come unto them.[122]
24. But if any should be convicted in any transgression, he is cast out
of the order, and he that is cast out sometimes perishes by a fearful
fate. For, being bound by the oaths and customs, he cannot take food
with other people. Therefore sometimes they utterly destroy the body
by famine. Wherefore in the last extremity they sometimes take pity
on many already dying, thinking the penalty unto death sufficient for
them.[123]
25. Concerning their judgments, they are most careful and just. They
deliver judgment after assembling not less [Sidenote: p. 463.] than
a hundred and what they determine is irrevocable. And they honour
the Lawgiver [next] after God, and if anyone blasphemes him, he is
punished. And they are taught to give ear to the rulers and elders;
and if ten are sitting in the same place, one will not speak unless
the others wish. And they are careful of spitting in front of them or
on the right side; and more than all the Jews, they arrange to abstain
from work on the Sabbath. For not only do they prepare their food
one day before, so as not to light a fire, but they neither move an
implement nor relieve nature. And some of them will not even get out of
bed. But on other days, when they wish to evacuate, they dig a pit a
foot long--with the hoe--for such is the hatchet which they give their
adherents when first becoming disciples[124]--and covering it on all
sides with their cloak, sit down, affirming that they must not insult
the rays [of the Sun]. Then they throw back the excavated earth into
the pit. And this they do choosing the most deserted places, [and] when
they have done this they straightway wash, as if the [Sidenote: p.
464.] secretion were polluting.[125]
26. But in course of time they have drawn apart and do not [all]
observe the discipline in the same way,[126] being divided into four
parts. For some of them are more austere than they need be, so that
they will carry no coin, saying that they must not bear any image, nor
look upon it, nor make it. Wherefore none of them goes into a city,
lest he shall enter in through a gate whereon are statues, as they
think it unlawful to pass under an image. And others, if they hear
anyone holding forth about God and His Law, will watch such an one
until he is alone in some place, and threaten to kill him if he be not
circumcised. Whom, if he does not consent, he does not spare, but slays
him. Whence from this occurrence they take their name, being called
Zealots, but by some Sicarii. And yet others of them name none Lord but
God, even if any should torture or slay them. And those who succeeded
them became so much worse than their discipline that they would not
touch [Sidenote: p. 465.] those who remained in the ancient customs:
[or] if they did so [by accident] they straightway washed themselves
as if they had touched one of another sect. And the majority are
long-lived, so that they live more than a hundred years. Now they say
that the cause of this is their consummate piety towards God, and their
condemning the serving [of food] without measure and to their being
continent and slow to anger. And they despise death rejoicing that they
can make an end with a good conscience. But if any one should torture
such [men] to make them speak ill of the Law or to eat food offered to
idols, they would not do so, suffering death and supporting tortures so
that they may not go beyond their conscience.[127]
27. But the doctrine of the Resurrection is also strong among them. For
they confess that the flesh rises again and will be immortal in the
same way that the soul is already immortal. Which soul when it departs
from the body, abides in an airy and well-lighted place until judgment,
which place the Greeks hearing of it called [the] Islands of the
Blessed. But there are other opinions of them which [Sidenote: p. 466.]
many of the Greeks appropriated and maintained as their own teaching.
For the discipline among them concerning the Divine is earlier than
all nations, as is proved by all that the Greeks have ventured to
say about God or the fashioning of the things that are starting from
no other source than the Jewish Law. Wherefrom especially Pythagoras
and those of the Porch took much, having been instructed in it by the
Egyptians. And [the Essenes] say also that there will be a judgment
and a conflagration of the All, and that the unjust will be punished
everlastingly. And prophecy and the foretelling of things to come are
practised among them.[128]
28. Now there is another order of Essenes making use of their customs
and way of life, but they differ from these [just described] in the
one [point of] marriage; saying that those who reject marriage do a
fearful thing. And they declare that this comes to the taking-away of
life, and that one must not cut off the succession of children, and
that if everyone thought like this, the whole race of men might easily
be cut off. They certainly try their wives for a period of three years;
but when they have had three purifications, so as to prove that they
can bear children, they wed them. [Sidenote: p. 467.] But they do
not company with them when pregnant, proving [thereby] that they do
not marry for pleasure but from need of children. And the women wash
themselves in the same way and don linen garments in the same way as
the men with their cinctures. This, then, concerning the Essenes.[129]
But there are others also disciplined in the customs of the Jews, and
called both legally and generically Pharisees. The majority of whom
are [to be found] in every place, and all call themselves Jews, but
on account of the special opinions held by them are called besides
by specific names.[130] Now they, while holding fast the ancient
tradition, continue to enquire methodically into what things are clean
and what unclean according to the Law. And they interpret the things of
the Law, putting forward teachers for that purpose. And they say that
Fate is, and that some things are due to free-will and some to Fate,
so that some [come] by ourselves and some by Fate. But that God is the
cause of all, and that nothing is arranged or happens without His will.
And they confess the Resurrection of the Flesh and that the [Sidenote:
p. 468.] soul is immortal, and [admit] a judgment to come and a future
conflagration, and that the wicked will be punished in unquenchable
fire.
29. But the Sadducees eliminate Fate, and confess that God neither
does nor contemplates anything evil; but that man has the power to
choose the good or evil. But they deny not only the Resurrection of the
Flesh, but also consider that the soul does not survive. But that its
[function] is to live and that that is why man is born. And that the
doctrine of the Resurrection is fulfilled by leaving children on earth
when we die. But that after death there will be no hope of suffering
either evil or good. For [they say that] there will be a dissolution
of soul and body and that man will go to that which is not in the same
way as the other animals. And that if a man has great possessions, and
having become rich is [thereby] glorified, he is so far the gainer; but
that God does not take care of the affairs of [Sidenote: p. 469.] any
one individual. And while the Pharisees love one another, the Sadducees
love [only] themselves. The same heresy was especially strong round
about Samaria. And they give heed to the customs of the Law, saying
that one ought to do so that one may live well and leave children
behind on earth. But they pay no attention to the Prophets, nor to any
other wise men, but only to the Law [given] through Moses. Nor do they
interpret anything. This then is the heresy of the Sadducees.[131]
30. Since now we have set forth the differences among the Jews, it
seems proper not to pass over in silence the discipline of their
service of God. Now there is a fourfold system with regard to the
service of God among all Jews [to wit] Theological, Physical, Moral
and Ceremonial.[132] And they say that there is one God, the Demiurge
of the All and the Maker of all things that before were not,[133]
nor did He make them from any subordinate essence, but He willed and
created. And that there are angels and that they have come into being
for the service of creation; but that there is also a Spirit having
authority ever standing beside Him for the glory and praise of God.
And that all things in the creation have sensation and that nothing is
without soul.[134] And they pursue customs tending to a holy [Sidenote:
p. 470.] and temperate life as is to be recognized in their Law. But
these things were of old carefully laid down by those who originally
received a God-made Law, so that the reader will be astonished at
so much moderation and care in the customs prescribed for man. But
the ceremonial service offered in becoming fashion was excellently
performed by them as it is easy for those who wish to learn by reading
the Book discoursing on these matters.[135] [There they will see] how
reverently and devoutly they offered to God the things given by Him for
the use and enjoyment of man, obeying Him orderly and constantly. Some
of these [doctrines] the Sadducees reject; for they hold that neither
angels nor spirit exist.[136]
[Sidenote: p. 471.] But all alike wait for Christ, the Coming One
foretold by the Law and the Prophets. But the time of the Coming was
not known of the Jews, [so that] the supposition endured that the
sayings which appeared to concern the Coming were unfulfilled. But they
expect that Christ will presently come, since they did not recognize
His presence. And seeing the signs of the times of His having come
already, this troubles them, and they are ashamed to confess that He
has come, since with their own hands they became His murderers, through
anger at being convicted by Him of not having hearkened to their Laws.
And they say that He who was thus sent by God is not Christ. But they
confess that another will come who as yet is not, and will bear some of
the signs which the Law and the Prophets foreshowed; but some things
they imagine wrongly. For they say that his birth will be from the race
of David, but not from a Virgin and [the] Holy Spirit, but from a woman
and a man, as it is a rule for all to be begotten from seed. And they
declare that he will be a king over them, a man of war and a mighty
one, who, having gathered together the whole nation of Jews, will make
war on all the nations and [Sidenote: p. 472.] re-establish for them
Jerusalem as the royal city. Whereunto he will gather in the whole
nation, and again will restore the ancient customs, while [the nation]
is king and priest[137] and dwells in security for a sufficient time.
Then shall again spring up against them a war of [the nations] gathered
together. In this war the Christ shall fall by the sword and not long
afterwards the end and conflagration of the All shall draw near, and
thus their conjectures about the Resurrection shall be fulfilled, and
everyone shall be recompensed according to his works.[138]
31. It seems to us that the opinions of all Greeks and Barbarians
have been sufficiently set forth, and that nothing has been left
undemonstrated either of the philosophizings[139] or of the things
imagined by the heretics. To those among them [who read this], the
refutation from what has been set forth is clear [viz.] that either
plagiarizing from or laying under contribution what the Greeks have
elaborated, they have put them forward as divine. Now, having run
through all [these systems] and having declared with much labour in
the nine books [above] all these opinions, thereby leaving to all men
a little guide through life, and furnishing to the [Sidenote: p. 473.]
readers a study of no little joy and gladness, we think it reasonable
to present as the conclusion of the whole [work] a discourse on the
Truth.[140] And we shall write this in one book, [viz.] the Tenth. So
that the reader, having recognized the overthrow which the heresies of
these audacious men have sustained, may not only despise their follies,
but by also recognizing the power of the Truth, [and] by worthily
believing in God, can be saved.
FOOTNOTES
[Footnote 1: ἡ καινὴ ἐπιδημία. The book Elchesai, as will presently be
seen, is said to have been revealed “in the third year of Trajan” and
therefore long anterior to our text. Hippolytus, therefore, probably
refers here to a recrudescence of the superstition connected therewith.]
[Footnote 2: This Noetus, whom Epiphanius (_Haer._, LVII) would make
a native of Ephesus, possibly by confusion with the Praxeas against
whom Tertullian wrote, was one of the first to teach the heresy called
Patripassian, which made the Father as well as the Son to suffer on
the Cross. His date is uncertain, but he was “not very long” dead when
Hippolytus wrote (see Hippolytus’ Tractate against Noetus in Gallandi,
_Bibl. Vet. Patr._ II, p. 454), and the seeds of the heresy seem to
have been sown in the time of Justin Martyr. It was undoubtedly Eastern
in origin and passed in Rome chiefly under the name of Sabellius.
Hippolytus was evidently its greatest opponent there, Zephyrinus and
Callistus maintaining a more tolerant attitude towards it, until the
last-named Pope was compelled to excommunicate Sabellius. See Salmon’s
articles in _D.C.B._, s.n.n. “Noetus,” “Praxeas,” “Epigonus” and
“Cleomenes,” and Mr. Hugh Pope’s article on “Monarchian” in Hastings’
_Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics_.]
[Footnote 3: Theodoret (_Haer. Fab._, III, 3) would reverse this
position and make Cleomenes Epigonus’ teacher and not his pupil. He has
probably misread Hippolytus on this point, the later heresiologists
frequently failing to distinguish the founders of any heresy from their
successors.]
[Footnote 4: This is evidently the beginning of Hippolytus’ quarrel
with the Primacy. Of Victor, Zephyrinus’ predecessor in the Roman
Chair, he speaks well. Cf. p. 128 _infra_.]
[Footnote 5: Cf. 2 Peter ii. 22.ff]
[Footnote 6: δυσφημίας.]
[Footnote 7: ἐν τοῖς φιλοσοφουμένοις. The Codex has Φιλοσοφουμένους.
He evidently refers to Book I, in which (Vol. I, p. 41) he has given a
few words in the gnomic sayings of Heraclitus. The only other previous
reference to them seems to be in Book V (Vol. I, p. 154 _supra_) where
he calls Heraclitus one of the wisest of the Greeks and in Book VI
(p. 4 _supra_) where he attributes Simon’s image of “a fiery God”
not to Moses but to Heraclitus. If Cruice’s emendation holds good
this shows that Book I was originally published separately and called
“Philosophizings,” the rest of the work being known as the _Elenchus_
or “Refutation.” Cf. Introduction _supra_. Bishop Wordsworth (St.
_Hippolytus and the Church of Rome_, London, 1880), gets over the
difficulty by reading the passage ἐν τοὺς Φιλοσοφουμένους ἡμῖν, “in
this our Philosophumena,” and this reading has been adopted in this
translation.]
[Footnote 8: Cf. Stobaeus, _Eclog. Phys._, I, xlii.]
[Footnote 9: λόγον αἰῶνα.]
[Footnote 10: τοῦ λόγου ἀκούσαντας, “listen to the argument.”
Hippolytus had he written in English would doubtless have said “the
Word,” but this has a different connotation in modern language.]
[Footnote 11: λόγος without the article.]
[Footnote 12: ἀπείροισιν ἐοίκασι πειρεώμενοι. It is very difficult
to make sense of these words and both Cruice and Macmahon leave them
untranslated.]
[Footnote 13: πεττεύων. Playing at _tessera_ or draughts. Cr.,
_tesseras jaciens_, a game in which there was chance as well as skill
like backgammon. Lucian, as Cruice notes, puts the same phrase into
Heraclitus’ mouth.]
[Footnote 14: Some word missing here.]
[Footnote 15: κρείττων supplied from the next quoted sentence.]
[Footnote 16: The Codex has ὅσον ὄψις κ.τ.λ. Cruice substitutes ὅσων
and translates _Quaecumque visus ... capere possunt_.]
[Footnote 17: Something probably omitted here also.]
[Footnote 18: ἕτερον.]
[Footnote 19: A screw. Also a staircase.]
[Footnote 20: ὀλέθριον, “destructive.”]
[Footnote 21: χρημοσύνη. Cr., _Inopia_, Macm., “Craving.”]
[Footnote 22: διακόσμησις. The making of a cosmos out of chaos or the
Creation.]
[Footnote 23: So Clem. Alex., _Strom._, V, 1, makes Heraclitus predict
the destruction of the world by fire. The same theory is attributed to
the Stoics.]
[Footnote 24: It has not been thought well to delay the reader by
attempting to puzzle out the meaning of Heraclitus whom the ancients
themselves did not profess to understand. So far as can be seen the
only likeness between his sayings and the teaching of Noetus and his
successors was due to the love of paradox shown by both. The parallel
between them that Hippolytus tries to draw is mainly forced upon him by
his own theory that all heresy is derived from Greek philosophy.]
[Footnote 25: A pun on νοητός, the adjective, and Noetus, the proper
name.]
[Footnote 26: Another pun between ἁιρουμένοι and αἵρεσις.]
[Footnote 27: The words in brackets supplied from the Summary in Book
X.]
[Footnote 28: Ἀχώρητος, “that cannot be confined (in space),” or what
we mean when we say that He is infinite.]
[Footnote 29: ἀκράτητος, “that cannot be dominated.” One would have
expected the word ἀνίκητος; but as this was one of the honorific titles
of the Emperor, it was doubtless altered for prudential reasons.]
[Footnote 30: Not “sovereignty” but the doctrine of One Source and
Ruler of All. The phrase constantly recurs in the theology of the time,
and the word Monarchian is applied to all heresies of the Noetian kind.]
[Footnote 31: There can be little doubt as to the source of this
chapter. The quotations from Heraclitus are taken from some book of
extracts, like the work of Diogenes Laertius, and much corrupted in the
taking: the words put into the mouth of Noetus on the other hand are
doubtless taken from some written note of the arraignment of Noetus
before “the blessed presbyters” who expelled him from the Church as
described in Hippolytus’ own tract against Noetus, mentioned in n. on
p. 118 _supra_. In c. 3 of this, Hippolytus declares that Noetus made
use of the same passages of Scripture as “Theodotus,” which explains
the allusion in the Table of Contents, and he uses other phrases to
be found in our text. As the whole controversy between himself and
Callistus was doubtless familiar to his readers, there was therefore no
reason for him to refer to any written document containing the opinion
of Noetus or his successors.]
[Footnote 32: In this chapter, as has been said, Hippolytus discloses
his chief reason for the publication or republication of the whole
work. The controversy which raged round the evidence of schism in
the Primitive Church which it affords has now died down, and we are
therefore able to examine such evidence dispassionately. The suggestion
that the Callistus here mentioned had been confused with another person
has now been given up, and there is little doubt that Hippolytus’
adversary was the Pope of that name who presided over the Church of
Rome between the primacies of Zephyrinus and Urbanus, this last being
quickly succeeded by Pontianus. In estimating the worth of the story
which Hippolytus here tells against him, the way has been cleared by
the frank acceptance by contemporary Catholic writers such as Monsignor
Duchesne (_Hist. ancienne de l’Église_, Paris, t. I,) and Dom. Chapman
(_The Catholic Encyclopædia_, New York, 1908, s.v. “Callistus”), of the
view that the calumnies against Callistus here put forward, although
much exaggerated and coloured, have a basis of fact. In this, they
follow the line taken by the celebrated Dr. Döllinger at the first
appearance of our text, and no modern scholar has yet been found to
seriously controvert it. It therefore only remains to draw attention to
the points in which Hippolytus has, in Dr. Döllinger’s opinion, garbled
or added colour to the facts, and on the whole, it has seemed more
satisfactory to do this in the footnotes than here. The references,
except when otherwise stated, are to the English edition of Döllinger’s
_Hippolytus and Callistus_, Edinburgh, 1876. Callistus’ primacy appears
from several testimonies to have lasted from A.D. 218 to 223, when he
was killed apparently in a riot.]
[Footnote 33: Zephyrinus appears to have been Pope from A.D. 202 to
218.]
[Footnote 34: τῳ ὑφ’ ἡμῶν παραινεῖσθαι. It is thought that this is a
_pluralis majestatis_ consequent on Hippolytus’ claim to be himself
Bishop of Rome.]
[Footnote 35: The construction of the whole of this paragraph offers
difficulty, and many emendations have been proposed in the text. The
reading of Roeper has been mainly followed here, and the meaning is not
doubtful.]
[Footnote 36: ἐν τῷ λαῷ, _i.e._ “the laity.”]
[Footnote 37: “Worshipper of two gods.” In Döllinger’s opinion (_op.
cit._, p. 219) this accusation was well founded.]
[Footnote 38: ἀγαπητόν. Doubtless written sarcastically. Wordsworth,
Cruice and Macmahon all attach the phrase to δοκεὶ and translate “seems
good,” for which use of the word I can find no precedent.]
[Footnote 39: ἐμαρτύρησεν. A play on the double meaning of the word,
which might be translated “he was martyred.” But Callistus had not been
martyred when our text was written, nor was he even a confessor.]
[Footnote 40: Ἔπαρχος. Fuscianus was Prefect of the City from A.D. 188
to 193.]
[Footnote 41: Evidently the freedman of Marcus Aurelius whose
inscription is to be found in C.I.L. 13040. Cf. de Rossi, _Bull._,
1866, p. 3, and Duchesne, _Hist. ancienne_, I, p. 294, n. 1.]
[Footnote 42: “Public Fishpool.” It was one of the fourteen _Regiones_
of the city and the quarter of the money-dealers. The Latin name is
here not translated, but written in Greek letters.]
[Footnote 43: ἐξαφανίσας. A similar word is used by Carpophorus in his
address to Fuscianus later. Döllinger, _op. cit._, argues that this
does not necessarily imply any criminality on Callistus’ part as he may
have lost the money in an attempt to increase his master’s profit. See
note on next page.]
[Footnote 44: οὐκ ἔλιπεν ὃς. Bunsen calls this “a rank Latinism.”]
[Footnote 45: Döllinger (_op. cit._, p. 109) draws attention to
Carpophorus’ cruelty as shown by his condemnation of a fellow-Christian
to the awful punishment of the treadmill.]
[Footnote 46: Portus Ostiensis or Ostia, the Port of Rome.]
[Footnote 47: Döllinger (_op. cit._, p. 110) argues that this was not
suicide but an attempt to escape.]
[Footnote 48: εἰς πίστρινον, transliterated as before. The terrible
nature of this punishment is well known. Cf. Darenberg and Saglio,
_Dict. des Antiq._, s.h.v.]
[Footnote 49: Döllinger (_op. cit._, p. 110) thinks that he had lent it
to the Jews, and that this accounts for the subsequent riot.]
[Footnote 50: See last note. In Döllinger’s opinion, he only went there
to ask for his money.]
[Footnote 51: ἀφανίσας.]
[Footnote 52: Döllinger (_ubi cit._) points out that Carpophorus’
speech throws further light on his character. Callistus _was_ a
Christian, as Hippolytus admits. Carpophorus’ anxiety to prevent his
being sentenced is explained by the fear of losing Callistus’ services,
sentence of penal servitude acting as manumission.]
[Footnote 53: Victor’s exact date is uncertain, but he probably
succeeded Eleutherus as Pope in A.D. 189 and was himself succeeded by
Zephyrinus in 202.]
[Footnote 54: τινὶ σπάδοντι πρεσβυτέρῳ. Some would translate “priest”;
but the ordination of a eunuch would be contrary to the Canons.]
[Footnote 55: ἐπιτροπεύων.]
[Footnote 56: Döllinger (_op. cit._) thinks there is no doubt from this
that Callistus was both condemned and set free as a Christian.]
[Footnote 57: From this, from the intervention of the brethren with
Carpophorus and from the favour shown to him by Hyacinthus, Döllinger
(_op. cit._) draws the conclusion that Callistus’ conduct up to this
point must have seemed to the community unlucky rather than criminal.]
[Footnote 58: The famous cemetery in the Via Appia still bearing his
name, where many of the early Popes are buried.]
[Footnote 59: ὑποκρίσει.]
[Footnote 60: ἐξηφάνισε. See n. 3 on p. 127.]
[Footnote 61: _i. e._ imagining himself to be the lawful Pope.]
[Footnote 62: Evidently refers to Hippolytus’ charge of Sabellianism
against him.]
[Footnote 63: γόης. Perhaps a juggler with words; but this sense is
unusual.]
[Footnote 64: See note on p. 125 _supra_. Döllinger (_op. cit._, p.
219) thinks that Hippolytus separated the Logos from God, and suggests
that Origen may have shared the error.]
[Footnote 65: Bishop Wordsworth (_St. Hippolytus and the Church of
Rome_, 1880, p. 87) would translate: “The Word is the Son and also the
Father, being called by a different name, but that the indivisible
Spirit is one.”]
[Footnote 66: Cf. John xiv. 11. The N.T. has πιστεύετε μοι, “Believe
me” (imperative).]
[Footnote 67: Döllinger (_op. cit._, p. 216) says this is a correct
statement of the Catholic position.]
[Footnote 68: Bunsen would read ἐκφυγών, [“thus] avoiding.” Cruice
inserts οὕτω πως ἐλπίζων, “thus hoping to avoid.” Döllinger inserts
ὥστε before ἐκφυγεῖν.]
[Footnote 69: If this Theodotus is, as seems probable, the Theodotus of
Byzantium mentioned in Book VII (p. 390 Cr.), who was excommunicated by
Victor, his heresy was, as Hippolytus himself records, Adoptianist, and
his opinions must have been poles asunder from those of Callistus.]
[Footnote 70: Here as elsewhere throughout this chapter, Hippolytus
assumes that he is the rightful head of the Catholic Church, and that
Callistus and the more numerous party within it are only a “school.”]
[Footnote 71: συναγόμενος, “gathered in,” “a member of any other man’s
congregation,” Wordsworth; _ab alio fuerat seductus_, Cruice, whom
Macmahon follows.]
[Footnote 72: A logical term.]
[Footnote 73: εἰς κλήρους. Döllinger (_op. cit._, p. 140) points out
that Lectors, acolyths, Ostiarii and sub-deacons were all included in
the phrase ἐν κλήρῳ afterwards used, and that such persons were not
forbidden to marry. Yet the context is against him, and there can be no
doubt that Hippolytus intends to imply, whether with truth or not, that
Callistus did not degrade even the superior clergy for marrying more
than once.]
[Footnote 74: ἐν κλήρῳ.]
[Footnote 75: Rom. xiv. 4.]
[Footnote 76: Matt. xiii. 29.]
[Footnote 77: εἰς ὁμοίωμα.]
[Footnote 78: ἐλεύθερον, “a freed man”?]
[Footnote 79: Döllinger (_op. cit._, p. 158) suggests that this is a
reference to the _contubernium_, or concubinage known to Roman Law,
which the Church insisted on regarding as a lawful marriage. The case
of Marcia mentioned above might be one in point, but it is to be noted
that Hippolytus calls her παλλακὴ Κομόδου only.]
[Footnote 80: This practice of second baptism, which Hippolytus does
not accuse Callistus of teaching, but of which he says that it was
begun in his time, is apparently brought in here to connect this
chapter with the next on the Elchesaites. Had such accusation any
foundation, it would certainly have been known to Cyprian or Firmilian.]
[Footnote 81: No other author seems to have taken up this name, and
the rest of the paragraph shows that it was Callistus’ party which was
regarded as Catholic and Hippolytus’ as schismatic. As Hippolytus was
writing of matters within his own knowledge and in some measure that of
his readers, there is no reason to suppose that he drew his material
from any written source; but it has been suggested that the facts in
Callistus’ life that he here narrates may have been obtained _vivâ
voce_ from Carpophorus.]
[Footnote 82: This heresy of the Elchesaites was a very old one, and
probably had its roots in the Babylonian religion some millennia before
Christian times, ablution and exorcism being then considered one of the
most effectual modes of removing the consequences of transgression.
Prof. Brandt, of Amsterdam, who has paid much attention to the Mandæan
religion which has affinities with it, in his monograph on the subject
(_Elchasai, Ein Religionstifter und sein Werk_, Leipzig, 1912), thinks
that Elchasai, a name which may mean something like “Power of the Sun,”
was a real man who flourished in the reign of Trajan (A.D. 98-117),
and founded in Syria an eclectic religion made up of the doctrines of
Judaism and Christianity, mingled with the belief in the sovereign
efficacy of baptism found among the Hemerobaptists, Mughtasila or
“Washers,” who still exist. Thus, according to En-Nadîm (Flügel’s
_Mani_, p. 340), these Mughtasila in the tenth century still reverenced
as a prophet a certain Al-[H.]asih who seems to be our Elchasai, along
with Moses, Christ, and Mohammed. It also appears that his successors
sent out missionaries to the West, including doubtless the Alcibiades
of our text. Origen, in his Homily on the 82nd Psalm, mentions having
met with one of these who may have been Alcibiades himself. They seem
to have obtained some success among the Ebionite and Essene communities
on the shores of the Dead Sea, but the effort soon died out, and
Eusebius (_Hist. Eccl._, VI, 38) says that it was stifled almost at
its birth. Epiphanius (_Haer._, XIX, 5; XXX, 17; and LIII, 1) mentions
them in connection with the “heresies” of the Nazaræans, Ebionites
and Sampsæans respectively, but like Theodoret does little but repeat
Hippolytus’ statements.]
[Footnote 83: This book which is mentioned by all the writers who refer
to Elchasai, doubtless began with the vision of the angel from whom he
professed to receive his revelations.]
[Footnote 84: ἀπο Σηρῶν, Chinese? Or it may be a town called Serae.]
[Footnote 85: Brandt (_op. cit._, p. 42) thinks the word is Mandæan or
Aramaic, and means “the Baptized,” _i.e._ the Mughtasila.]
[Footnote 86: These measurements, intended to show the enormous
difference in size between the celestial powers and mankind, are
peculiarly Jewish and are frequent in the Haggadah and Cabala.]
[Footnote 87: The Rman mile here meant was 142 yards less than ours.
The schoenus was a measure of land used also by the Egyptians and
Persians.]
[Footnote 88: _i. e._ as that of Callistus.]
[Footnote 89: Hippolytus’ motive in thus connecting Alcibiades’
visit with Callistus’ proceedings is obvious. There could be nothing
in common in the re-baptizing of reconverted heretics of which he
(probably erroneously) accuses his adversary, and the magical efficacy
of the ablution prescribed by Alcibiades.]
[Footnote 90: ἐλέγξαντες.]
[Footnote 91: νόθος, “bastard.” Is this an allusion to the composite
nature of the Elchesaite religion?]
[Footnote 92: All these phrases are so condensed as to make the
conjectural restoration of important words necessary. It would seem
that the author was here hurrying over his task.]
[Footnote 93: νόμου πολιτείαν. The Jewish Law is of course intended.]
[Footnote 94: Transmigration of souls does not appear to have entered
into the conceptions of the Mandæans, Mughtasila, or any other sects
with which Elchasai is known to have been connected; but Buddhist
ideas seem to have made some way with the Dead Sea communities. Did
Alcibiades draw this idea from them? If so this might explain the
allusion to the Seres.]
[Footnote 95: ἐπίλογοι.]
[Footnote 96: The text puts both Holy Spirit and Angels of Prayer in
the plural. Yet they must be singular, or the seven witnesses would
be more than that number. Brandt (_op. cit._) thinks many mistakes in
this chapter are to be explained by a faulty translation from Aramaic
into Greek. He also thinks that the mention of salt implies a sacrament
celebrated with bread and salt, and that earth, as one of the five
elements of Aristotle, should be substituted for the Earth as a pendant
to which Heaven is thrown in. It is simpler to derive the spell from
the ancient Babylonian religion in which Heaven and Earth are coupled
for the purpose of conjuration.]
[Footnote 97: πνεῦμα διαφθορᾶς. Cruice and Macmahon both translate
“spirit of destruction.” It evidently refers to rabies, and the authors
of the spell seem to have known that mere contact with a rabid animal
might produce infection.]
[Footnote 98: Both Miller and Duncker read προσευξάσθω, which has been
adopted here as making better sense. Cruice reads προσδειξάσθω, “show
himself unto.”]
[Footnote 99: εὐσεβεῖς. Often applied by the Jews of this time to those
who observed their usages, but were not full proselytes.]
[Footnote 100: _i. e._ “on which they bear rule”--a well-known
astrological phrase.]
[Footnote 101: _i. e._ “rises and sets with them.”]
[Footnote 102: This cannot mean that it is one of the days when the
evil stars rule. Probably some words like “which God has chosen” are
omitted.]
[Footnote 103: Did Alcibiades or Elchasai consider Trajan’s successful
campaign against the Parthians a calamity?]
[Footnote 104: Ἄρκτων, lit., “of the Bears.” Thus Cruice. But it is
probably another case of putting plurals for singulars.]
[Footnote 105: It is said that this is an unfulfilled prediction which
fixes the date of Elchasai’s book. If, however, we take Trajan’s
invasion of Parthia at A.D. 113, which seems the most likely date, the
rebellion of the Jews in the Cyrenaica, Egypt and Cyprus broke out
within the three years mentioned and raged until it was suppressed by
Marcius Turbo and Lusius Quietus, about the end of 116. The book may
therefore well be later than this.]
[Footnote 106: A possible allusion to Matt. vii. 6.]
[Footnote 107: For the reason of this omission see Introduction,
_supra_.]
[Footnote 108: μηδὲ σιωπήσας, “when I have not kept silence about”--a
roundabout phrase.]
[Footnote 109: This promise is fulfilled by the peroration of Book X.
This shows the close connection between the Summary and the first nine
Books, and proves that the author of Book X, if not Hippolytus himself,
was at any rate some one who wished to be taken for him.]
[Footnote 110: The quotations in this chapter from the book of Elchasai
were doubtless taken from a Greek translation of that work brought to
Rome by Alcibiades.]
[Footnote 111: The reasons that probably influenced Hippolytus in
writing this description of Jewish religion as a sequel to his Ninth
Book are stated in the Introduction. It is for the most part extracted
from Josephus, the order of the paragraphs following that adopted by
him, and the words being in many cases the same. This has led Cruice to
suggest that both are taken from a common source, which he takes to be
a Christian writer of the first century. This is extremely unlikely,
since Epiphanius, Porphyry and Pliny all quote Josephus directly; but
it is probable that when he leaves Josephus, as he does after the
account of the Sadducees, Hippolytus draws from the statements of some
Jewish convert to Christianity of whom we know nothing. In this, the
Messianic ideas of the Jews which brought about the great revolt under
Bar Cochba are clearly set out, but it is curious that writing as he
must have done long after the practical extermination of the Jewish
nation by Hadrian, he should have made no allusion to it; and it may
therefore well be that he preferred to condense here the statements
which Justin Martyr puts into the mouth of Trypho, with which his own
agree in almost every particular. This Ninth Book bears throughout
the marks of haste or weariness, many of the sentences, except where
he is manifestly using the work of another as model, being slurred
over and difficult to construe grammatically. In one or two cases, he
contradicts his own statements, as in the case of the Sadducees, making
a subsequent correction by himself or the scribe necessary. See n. on
p. 147 _infra_.]
[Footnote 112: οἱ φιλομαθεῖς. Here as elsewhere this seems to mean “the
learned” simply.]
[Footnote 113: εἴδη, “species,” or “kinds.”]
[Footnote 114: ἕτεροι δὲ. Does he mean that all the rest of the Jews
are Essenes? Throughout this Book the article is frequently omitted
as in the title to this chapter. The rest of the section is almost
_verbatim_ from Josephus, _de Bell Jud._, II, 8, 2.]
[Footnote 115: τεκνυποιοῦνται, “make them their own children.”]
[Footnote 116: αἱρετιστῶν. A Latinism here used for the first time by
Hippolytus.]
[Footnote 117: These two sections also are taken from Josephus, _op.
cit._, II, 8, 3, 4.]
[Footnote 118: So is this. Cf. Josephus, _op. cit._, II, 8, 5.]
[Footnote 119: τῷ προεστῶτι. The president of the feast is evidently a
different person from the official of the same name in § 20, or of the
ἱερεύς or priest in § 21, _supra_.]
[Footnote 120: Words in ( ) inserted by Cruice from Josephus from whose
§ 6 this section is taken.]
[Footnote 121: σύνταγμα, _volumen ad usum fidelium_, Cruice,
“treatise,” Macmahon.]
[Footnote 122: This, too, is almost _verbatim_ from Josephus, _op.
cit._, II, 8, 7; but it is to be noted that Hippolytus omits the
obligation to preserve the books of the sect and the names of the
angels.]
[Footnote 123: Cf. Josephus, _op. cit._, § 8.]
[Footnote 124: Like the Egyptian _turria_, an axe with its blade at
right angles to instead of in a line with the shaft. Much used for
digging.]
[Footnote 125: This section also is taken from Josephus, _op. cit._,
II, 8, 9. Hippolytus omits to say that the blasphemers of Moses were to
be punished capitally. The refusal to get out of bed is not mentioned
by Josephus.]
[Footnote 126: τὴν ἄσκησιν, lit., “training,” as for a gymnastic
competition. Cf. our word “ascetic.”]
[Footnote 127: Josephus, _op. cit._, § 10, says that the sect and not
their teaching was fourfold. He transfers the story of pollution by
touch to the attitude of the seniors towards the juniors, and knows
nothing of the gate story. The Zealots, according to him (_op. cit._,
VII, 8, 1) grew up under the Sicarii, who defended Masada against the
Romans in Vespasian’s time. The rest of this section corresponds with
his Book II, 8, 10.]
[Footnote 128: In this section, Hippolytus leaves Josephus, except as
to the Islands of the Blessed and the Essene gift of prophecy, both of
which are to be found in Josephus, _op. cit._, II, 8, 11, 12.]
[Footnote 129: Josephus (_op. cit._, II, 8, 13), almost _verbatim_
through the whole section.]
[Footnote 130: ὀνόμασι κυρίοις, properly “nicknames.” He seems to
imply that while they called themselves Jews, other people knew them
as Pharisees, Chasidim, or Puritans. The statement about Fate and the
everlasting punishment of the wicked is to be found in Josephus (_op.
cit._, II, 8, 14), but the reward of the good is there said to be
metempsychosis.]
[Footnote 131: This section also appears to be expanded from Josephus,
_op. cit._, II, 8, 14.]
[Footnote 132: ἱερουργική.]
[Footnote 133: He here seems to imply that in the view of the Jews, at
any rate, the All was made from pre-existent material, as a house from
bricks, while some things were created _e nihilo_. This is denied in
the next sentence.]
[Footnote 134: ἄψυχον. Perhaps with Cruice and Macmahon, we should
translate “without _life_.” Yet it seems hardly possible that Jews
considered stones and minerals as alive.]
[Footnote 135: Leviticus?]
[Footnote 136: Here he, or perhaps some commentator, has to contradict
what he has just said about “all” Jews believing these doctrines.]
[Footnote 137: βασιλεῦον καὶ ἱερατεῦον, “acting as kings and priests.”]
[Footnote 138: Here again it is plain that “all Jews” could not believe
this statement of Messianic hopes, and the Sadducees in particular
would have repudiated what he says about the Resurrection and future
recompense.]
[Footnote 139: τῶν φιλοσοφουμένων, a play quite in Hippolytus’ usual
manner on the name of the Book and its meaning. It should be noted that
the “things imagined by the heretics” correspond to the second title,
“Refutation of all Heresies.”]
[Footnote 140: He has already promised this in the conclusion to the
chapter on the Elchesaites (p. 138 _supra_), which strengthens one’s
conviction that that on the Jews was an afterthought. It is plain,
however, that nine Books were intended to precede the “Discourse on the
Truth.” Here again, he does not mention the Summary.]
[Sidenote: p. 474.] BOOK X
SUMMARIES, AND THE WORD OF TRUTH
1. These are the contents of the 10th [Book] of the Refutation of all
Heresies.
2. An epitome of all the philosophers.
3. An epitome of all [the] heresies.[1]
4. And what is in all things the Word of Truth.
5. Having broken through the labyrinth[2] of the heresies without
violence but rather having dissolved them by our single refutation
in the power of Truth, we now draw near to the demonstration of the
Truth itself. For then the manufactured sophistries of the error will
appear inconsistent, when the definition of the Truth has shown that
it has not taken its beginnings from the philosophy of the Greeks. Nor
[has it taken] from [the] Egyptians [the] doctrines (and) the follies
which are adored among them as worthy of faith--as [the] mysteries
have taught--nor has it been devised out of the inconsistent jugglery
of [the] Chaldæans, nor been forged by the unreasoning madness of
[the] Babylonians through the activity of demons.[3] In whatever
shape, however, the definition subsists, it is true, unguarded, and
unadorned,[4] and by its appearance alone will refute the [Sidenote:
p. 475.] error. Concerning which, although we have many times made
demonstrations, and have pointed out the Rule of Truth sufficiently
and abundantly for those who are willing to learn, yet once again we
judge it reasonable on the top of all the doctrines of the Greeks and
heretics, to place as if it were [the] crown of the books [preceding],
this demonstration by means of the tenth book.
6. Now having brought together the teachings of all the sages among
[the] Greeks in four books,[5] and those of the heresiarchs in
five, we shall point out the Doctrine concerning the Truth in one,
after having first made a summary of what has been the opinions of
all. For the teachers of the Greeks, dividing philosophy into three
parts, so philosophize, some preaching Physics, some Ethics and some
Dialectic.[6] And those who preached Physics thus declared, some that
all things were born from one, others from many. And of those who
said [they came] from one, some [said they came] from what had no
Quality, and others from that which had Quality. And of those who [said
they came] from that which had Quality, some [said that they came]
[Sidenote: p. 476.] from fire, others from air, others from water and
yet others from earth. And of those who [said they came forth] from
many things, some [said that they came] from numerable things [others
from boundless ones. And of those who said they came from numerable
things], some [say that they came] from two, others from four, others
from five, and others from six. And of those [who say] that they came
from the boundless things, some [say that they came] from things like
generated things, others from those unlike. And some of them say that
they came from things impassible, others from things passible. The
Stoics indeed would establish the birth of the universals from that
which has no Quality and one body. For according to them, matter
unqualified and capable of change by means of the universals is their
source. And when it is transformed, fire, air, water and earth come
into being. And those who will have all things to come into being from
that which has Quality are the followers of Hippasus and Anaximander
and Thales the Milesian. Hippasus the Metapontian[7] and Heraclitus
the Ephesian declared the genesis of things to be from fire, but
Anaximander from air, Thales from water, and Xenophanes from earth.
“For all things [came forth] from earth and all end in earth.”[8]
[Sidenote: p. 477.] 7. Of those who would derive the universals from
[the] many and [the] numerable, the poet Homer declares that the
universals have been composed of earth and water when he says:--
“Ocean source of Gods and mother Tethys.”[9]
and again:--
“But turn ye all to water and earth.”[10]
And Xenophanes the Colophonian seems to agree with him, for he says:--
“All we are sprung from earth and water.”[11]
But Euripides says from earth and aether, as he lets us see from his
saying:--
“I sing aether and earth, mother of all.”[12]
But Empedocles from four, saying thus:--
[Sidenote: p. 478.] “Hear first the four roots of all things;
Shining Zeus and life-bearing Here and Aïdoneus
And Nestis who wets with tears the human source.”
But from five, Ocellus the Lucanian[13] and Aristotle. For with the
four elements they include the fifth and rotating body whence, they
say, are all heavenly things. But from six, the followers of Empedocles
derived the birth of all things. For in the verses where he says:--
“Hear first the four roots of all things”
he makes everything come from four. But when he adds to this:--
“And baleful Strife apart from these [and] equal everywhere,
And Love with them equal in length and breadth,”[14]
he is handing down six things as sources of the universals [_i. e._]
four material: earth, water, fire, [and] air and two, [Sidenote: p.
479.] the agents Love and Strife. But the followers of Anaxagoras the
Clazomenian and Democritus and Epicurus and very many others whose
[opinions] we have before recorded in part, taught that the genesis
of all things was from the boundless. But Anaxagoras says they came
from things like those produced; but the followers of Democritus and
Epicurus, from those unlike and impassible, that is from the atoms;
and those of Heraclides the Pontian[15] and Asclepiades[16] from those
which are unlike, but passible, such as disconnected corpuscles.
But the followers of Plato say that they came from three, and that
these are God, Matter and Exemplar; but he divides matter into four
principles: fire, water, earth, air; and says that God is the Demiurge
of Matter, but Exemplar the Mind.
8. Now, having been persuaded that the system of Natural Science[17] is
confessedly found unworkable by all these [philosophers], we ourselves
shall unhesitatingly say concerning the examples of the Truth what they
are and how we believe in them. But in addition we will first set forth
in epitome the [opinions] of the heresiarchs, so that [Sidenote: p.
480.] the opinions of all being thereby easy to discern, we may display
the Truth as clear and easy to discern also.
1. _Naassenes._
9. But since this seems fitting, we will begin first with the
ministers of the serpent. The Naassenes call the first principle of
the universals a man and also Son of Man,[18] and him they divide into
three. For part of him, they say, is intellectual, part psychic, and
part earthly. And they call him Adamas and think the knowledge of him
is the beginning of the power to know God. And they say that all these
intellectual and psychic and earthly [parts] came into Jesus, and that
the three substances spoke together through Him to the three races of
the All. Thus they declare that there are three races, [the] angelic,
psychic [and] earthly, and that there are three Churches, angelic,
psychic and earthly; but that their names are [the] Called, Chosen,
[and] Captive. These are the heads of their doctrine in so far as it
can be briefly comprehended. They [Sidenote: p. 481.] say that they
were handed down by James the Brother of the Lord to Mariamne, thereby
belying both.[19]
2. _Peratæ._
10. But the Peratæ, Ademes the Carystian and Euphrates the Peratic[20]
say that a certain cosmos--this is what they call it--is one divided
into three. But of this threefold division of theirs, there is a single
source, as it were a great fountain, capable of being cut by the reason
into boundless sections. And the first and most excellent section is
according to them the triad and the one part of it is called Perfect
Good [and] Fatherly Greatness. But the second part of the Triad is, as
it were a certain boundless multitude of powers, and the third is that
of form. And the first [of the Triad] is unbegotten (since it is good:
but the second good and self-begotten and the third, begotten).[21]
Whence they say explicitly that there are three gods, three words,
[Sidenote: p. 482.] three minds [and] three men. For to each part of
the cosmos when the division was made, they assign Gods and Words and
Men and the rest. But from on high, from the unbegotten state and from
the first section of the cosmos, when the cosmos had already been
brought to completion, there came down in the time of Herod a certain
triple-natured and triple-bodied and triple-powered man called Christ,
having within Him all the compounds and powers from the three parts of
the cosmos. And this they will have to be the saying: “In Him dwells
all the Fulness of the Godhead bodily.” For [they say that] there came
down from the two overlying worlds, namely from the unbegotten and the
self-begotten, to this world in which we are, all sorts of seeds of
powers. And that Christ came down from the Unbegottenness in order that
through His descent all the things triply divided may be saved. For the
things, he says, brought down from on high shall ascend through Him;
but those who take counsel together against those brought down shall be
ruthlessly rejected and having been punished shall be sent away. And
he says that those [worlds] which will be saved are two, the overlying
ones [Sidenote: p. 483.] released from corruption. But the third will
be destroyed, which is the world of form.[22] And thus the Peratæ.
3. _The Sethiani._
11. But to the Sethians it appears that there are three definite
principles of the universals. And that each of these principles (has
boundless powers ... everything which you perceive by your mind or
which you pass over for lack of thought)[23] is formed by nature to
become [each of the principles] as in the human soul every art is to be
learned. As if [they say] there should come to a boy spending some time
with a pipe-player, the power of pipe-playing, or with a geometrician
the power of measurement, or in like manner with any other art. But the
substances of the principles, they say, are light and darkness. And
between them is pure spirit. But the spirit which is set between the
darkness which is below and the light which is above is, they say, not
spirit like a gust of wind or any small breeze which may be perceived,
but resembles some faint fragrance of balsam or [Sidenote: p. 484.]
of incense artificially compounded as a power penetrating by force of
fragrance and better than words can say. But because the light is above
and the darkness below and the spirit between them, the light, like
a ray of the sun on high, shines on the underlying darkness, and the
fragrance of the spirit holding the middle place is borne and spread
abroad as the odour of incense on the fire is borne. And as the power
of the triply divided is such, the power of the spirit and the light
together are below in the darkness beneath. But, they say, the darkness
is a fearful water into which the light is drawn down with the spirit
and changed into a similar nature. Now the darkness is sensible, and
knows that if the light is taken away from it, the darkness will remain
desolate, viewless, without light, powerless, idle and weak. In this
way by all its wit and foresight it is forced to retain within itself
the brilliance and scintillation of the light along with the fragrance
of the spirit.
And with regard to this, they bring in this image, saying that as
the pupil of the eye appears dark because of the [Sidenote: p. 485.]
waters underneath it, but it is made light by the spirit, thus the
light seeks after the spirit and retains for itself all the powers
which wish to withdraw and to depart. But these are ever boundless,
wherefrom all things are modelled and become like mingled seals. For,
as the seal coming into conjunction with the wax, makes the impress,
while itself remains by itself whatever it was, so the powers coming
into conjunction with each other elaborate all the boundless races of
living things. Therefore [they say] came into being from the first
conjunction of the three principles, the form of a great seal [_i.e._]
of heaven and earth, which had a shape like a womb with the navel in
the midst. Thus also the rest of the models of all things were modelled
resembling a womb like heaven and earth. But they say that from the
water came into being the first born principle, a violent and rushing
wind the cause of all generation, which sets in action a certain heat
and movement in the cosmos from the movement of the waters. And [they
say] [Sidenote: p. 486.] that this was changed into a complete form
like the hissing of a serpent, beholding which the cosmos is driven to
generation, being excited like a womb, and therefrom they will have
it the generation of the universals is established. And they say that
this wind is a spirit and that a perfect god came into being from the
waters and from the fragrance of the spirit and from the brilliance of
the light. And that there is also the begetting of a female, Mind, the
spark from on high which is mingled with the accretions of the body and
hastens to flee away so that it may escape and not find dissolution
through being enchained in the waters. Whence it cries aloud from the
mingling of the waters according to the Psalmist, as they say. “Thus
the whole care of the light on high is how it shall draw the spark
beneath from the Father who is below,” [that is], from the wind which
puts in action heat and disturbance and creates for himself Mind (a
perfect son) who is not (peculiar) to himself, [whom] they declare,
beholding the [Sidenote: p. 487.] perfect Word of the light from on
high, changed Himself into the form of a serpent and entered into a
womb, so that He might take again that mind which is a spark of the
light. And this, [they say] is the saying: “Who, being in the form of
God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but emptied himself,
taking the form of a servant.” And this the unhappy and wicked Sethians
will have to be the [servile] form.[24] This then is what they say.
4. _Simon._
12. And the all-wise Simon says thus. There is a boundless power and
this is the root of the universals. The boundless power is, he says,
fire. According to him, it is not simple, as the many say the four
elements are simple and therefore think fire is simple; but [he says]
that the nature of the fire is double, and of this double [nature] he
calls one part hidden and the other manifest. And [Sidenote: p. 488.]
that the hidden parts are concealed within the manifest parts of the
fire, and the manifest parts of the fire are produced by the hidden.
But, he says, that all the seen and unseen parts of the fire are to be
considered as having sense.[25] Therefore, he says, the begotten world
came into being from the unbegotten fire. But it began to come into
being, he says, thus. The begotten [cosmos] took from the principle
of that fire the first six roots of the principle of generation. For
these six roots were born from the fire by pairs, which he calls
Nous and Epinoia, Phonê and Onoma, Logismos and Enthymesis. And [he
says] that in these six roots [taken] together, the Boundless Power
exists (potentially but not actively, which Boundless Power) he says
is the “He who Stands, Stood, and will Stand,” which if it be exactly
reflected will be within the six powers in substance, powers, greatness
and influence, being one and the same as the Unbegotten and Boundless
Power, and in no way inferior to that Unbegotten and Unchangeable and
Boundless Power. But if it remains only potentially in the Six Powers
and is not exactly [Sidenote: p. 489.] reflected, it, he says, vanishes
and will die away like the grammatical or geometrical power in the mind
of a man, when he does not receive technical teaching in addition. And
Simon says that himself is the He Who Stands, Stood, and will Stand,
being the Power which is above all.[26] Thus, then, Simon.
5. _Valentinus._
13. But Valentinus and those from his school say the Source of the All
is a Father and yet are carried into conflicting opinions [about him].
For some of them [think] that he is alone and capable of generation,
while others hold that he is incapable of bringing forth without a
female, and give him as a spouse Sigê, calling him Bythos. From whom
and from his spouse some say that six projections came into being,
[viz.] Nous and Aletheia, Logos and Zoë, Anthropos and Ecclesia, and
that this is the first Ogdoad which brings forth.[27] And, again, [they
say] that the projections which were first born within the Limit[28]
are called the things within the Pleroma; but those second, those
[Sidenote: p. 490.] without the Pleroma; and those third, those without
the Limit, the offspring of which last exists as the Hysterema.[29]
But he says that there was born from that which was projected in the
Hysterema, an Aeon, and that this is the Demiurge, for he does not
wish him to be the First God, but speaks ill both of him and of what
came into being by him. And [he says] that Christ came down from that
which was within the Pleroma for the salvation of the Spirit that went
astray, which dwells in our inner man, which they say will be saved for
the sake of the indwelling one. But [Valentinus] will not have it that
the flesh will be saved, calling it a “coat of skin” and a corrupter
of mankind. I have described this in epitome, as one meets with much
matter [concerning it] and differing opinions among them. This then is
what Valentinus’ school thinks.[30]
6. _Basilides._
14. But Basilides also says that there is a God-Who-Is-Not who, being
non-existent [made] the created world out [Sidenote: p. 491.] of the
things that are not. [He says] that a certain seed, like a grain of
mustard-seed was cast down, which contained within itself the stem,
the leaves, the branches [and] the fruit; or, like a peacock’s egg,
contains within itself a varied multitude of colours, and they say
that this is the seed of the cosmos, from which all things were
produced. For [he says] the seed contained all things within itself,
inasmuch as thus the things that were not were preordained to come
into being by the God-Who-Is-Not. Then there was, they say, in that
seed a Sonhood, tripartite and in all things of the same substance
with the God-Who-Is-Not, being begotten from the things that were not.
And of this tripartite Sonhood, one part was [itself] finely divided,
another coarsely so, while the other part needed purification. But the
finely-divided part, straightway and concurrently with the happening
of the first casting-down of the seed by the God-Who-Is-Not, escaped
and went on high and came into the presence of Him-Who-Is-Not. For
every nature yearns for Him because of His superabundance of beauty,
but each in a different way. But the more coarsely divided [part] abode
in the Seed and being merely imitative could not go on high, for it
was much inferior [Sidenote: p. 492.] to the finer part.[31] And it
was given wings by the Holy Spirit, for the Sonhood putting them on,
both gives and receives benefit.[32] But the third Sonhood has need of
purification. It remains in the heap of the Panspermia and it gives and
receives benefit. And [he says] that there is something called [the]
Cosmos and something hypercosmic for (the things that are) are divided
by him into these two primary divisions. And what is between them, he
calls [the] Boundary Holy Spirit, having the fragrance of the Sonhood.
From the Panspermia of the heap of the cosmic seed, there escaped and
was brought forth the Great Ruler, the chief of the Cosmos, [a being]
of unspeakable beauty and greatness. And he, uplifting himself to
the firmament thought there was none other above him. And he became
brighter and mightier than all below him, save the Sonhood left behind
whom he did not know to be wiser than he. This [Ruler] having turned to
the fashioning of the Cosmos, first begat for himself a Son better than
he, and made him sit at his right hand. And this [place of the Ruler]
they declare the Ogdoad. He then builds the whole [Sidenote: p. 493.]
heavenly creation. But another Ruler ascended from the Panspermia,
greater than all those lying beneath save the Sonhood left behind,
but much inferior to the first, and he is called Hebdomad. He is the
Creator and Demiurge and Controller of all below him; and he also made
for himself a son more foresighted and wiser than he. But all these,
they say, are according to the predetermination of that One-Who-Is-Not,
and are worlds and boundless spaces.[33] And [Basilides] says that
on Jesus who was born of Mary the power of [the] Gospel came, which
descended and illumined the Son of the Ogdoad and the Son of the
Hebdomad for the illumination and separation and purification of the
Sonhood left behind that he might benefit and receive benefits from
the souls. And they say that themselves are sons [of God], who for
this purpose are in the world, [viz.] that they may purify the souls
by their teaching and go on high together with the [third] Sonhood
to the presence of the Father above, from whom the first Sonhood
proceeded.[34] And they declare that the cosmos shall endure until
all the souls together with the Sonhood shall withdraw [from it]. And
Basilides is not ashamed to narrate these portents.[35]
[Sidenote: p. 494.] 7. _Justinus._[36]
15. Justinus also daring to [advance] things like these, says thus:
“There are three unbegotten principles of the universals, two male
[and] one female.” Of the male, one is a certain principle called the
Good, and is alone thus called, having foreknowledge of the universals.
But the other [male] is the Father of all begotten ones, and has no
foreknowledge and is unknown and unseen and is called, they say,
Elohim. [But] the female is without foreknowledge, inclined to passion,
double-minded, double-bodied, as in the stories about her[37] which we
have above related in detail, the upper parts of her down to the groin
being a virgin and those [below] a viper. The same is called Edem and
Israel. And he declares that these are the principles of the universals
wherefrom all things came into being. And [he says] that Elohim
came without foreknowledge to desire for the composite virgin, and,
companying with her, begat [Sidenote: p. 495.] twelve angels. The names
of these are....[38] And of these the paternal ones take sides with
the (father); but the maternal ones with the mother. The same are (the
trees of Paradise)[39] whereof Moses, speaking allegorically, wrote in
the Law. And all things were made by Elohim and Edem; and the animals
together with the rest of [creation] come from the beast-like parts,
but man from those above the groin. And Edem deposited in [man] the
soul which is her power (but Elohim the spirit). But he declares that
Elohim having learned [of the light above him] ascended to the presence
of the Good One and left Edem behind. Whereat she being angered makes
every plot against the spirit of Elohim which is deposited in man. And
for his sake, the Father sent Baruch and commanded the Prophets (to
speak) so that he might set free the spirit of Elohim and draw all
men away from Edem. But he [Sidenote: p. 496.] declares that Heracles
became a prophet and that he was worsted by Omphale, that is by Babel,
whom they name Aphrodite. And at last in the days of Herod Jesus became
the son of Mary and Joseph, to Whom he declares Baruch to have spoken.
And that Edem plotted against Him, but could not beguile Him, and
therefore made Him to be crucified. Whose spirit [Justinus] says went
on high to the Good One. And thus (the spirits) of all who believe
these silly and feeble stories will be saved; but the body and soul
belonging to Edem, whom the foolish Justinus calls the Earth,[40] will
be left behind.[41]
8. _The Docetae._
16. But the Docetae say things like this: That the first God is as
the seed of the fig-tree from whom have come three Aeons, like the
stem and the leaves and [Sidenote: p. 497.] the fruit. And that these
have projected thirty Aeons, each of them (ten). But all are linked
together in tens and only differ in arrangement by some being before
others.[42] And they projected infinitely boundless Aeons and are all
masculo-feminine. And having taken counsel they all came together into
one and from this intermediate Aeon was begotten from the Virgin Mary
the Saviour of all, like in all things to the seed of the fig-tree,
but inferior to it in that He was begotten. For the seed whence the
fig-tree [comes] is unbegotten.[43] This then was the great light of
the Aeons, complete, receiving no setting in order,[44] containing
within itself the forms of all the animals. And [they say] that this
[light] shining into the underlying chaos provided a cause to the
things which have been and are, and descending from on high impressed
[on the] chaos below the forms of the Aeonic exemplars.[45] For the
third Aeon which had tripled itself, seeing that all his types were
drawn down into the darkness below and not being ignorant of the
terrible nature of the darkness and the simplicity of the light,
created heaven and having fixed it between, divided in twain the
darkness and the light.[46] Then all the forms of the third Aeon
having been overcome, [Sidenote: p. 498.] they say, by the darkness,
his likeness[47] subsisted as a living fire coming into being by the
light. From which, they say, the Great Ruler came to be, of whom Moses
talks when he says that this God is a fiery God and a Demiurge who ever
transfers the forms[48] of all (Aeons) into bodies. But they declare
that it is these souls for whose sake the Saviour came,[49] and showed
the way whereby those that had been overcome may escape. And [they
say] that Jesus did on that unique power, wherefore He could not be
gazed upon by any by reason of the overpowering greatness of His glory.
And they say that all things happened to Him as is written in the
Gospels.[50]
9. _Monoimus._
17. But the followers of Monoimus the Arab say that [Sidenote: p. 499.]
the principle of the All is a First Man[51] and Son of Man, and that
the things which have come to pass as Moses says, came into being not
by the First Man but by the Son of Man, and not from the whole, but
from part of him. And that the Son of Man is Iota, which is the Decad,
a dominant number wherein is the substance of all number, whereby
every number subsists, and is the birth of the All [viz.] Fire, Air,
Water [and] Earth. But this being so, Iota is one and one tittle, a
perfect thing from the Perfect, a tittle flowing from on high, having
within itself whatever also has the Man the Father of the Son of Man.
Therefore [Monoimus] says that the world of Moses came into being in
six days, that is, in six powers, from which the cosmos came forth from
the one tittle. For cubes and octahedrons and pyramids and all the
equal-sided figures like these, whence are made up Fire, Air, Water
[and] Earth, have came into being from the numbers left behind in that
simple tittle of the Iota which is the Son of Man. When therefore, he
says, Moses speaks of a rod turning [Sidenote: p. 500.] towards Egypt
he is attributing allegorically the woes[52] of the world to the Iota,
nor does he figure more than the ten woes. But if, he says, you wish
to understand the All, enquire within thyself who it is who says, “My
soul, my flesh, my mind,”[53] and who within thee makes each thing his
own as another does to him. Understand that this is a perfect thing
from the Perfect who considers all the so-called non-existent and all
the existent as peculiar to himself.[54] This then is what Monoimus
thinks.
10. _Tatian._
18. But Tatian, like Valentinus and the others, says that there are
certain unseen Aeons, by one of whom below the cosmos and the things
that are, were fashioned. And he practises a very cynical mode of life,
and hardly differs from Marcion in his blasphemies and his rules about
marriage.[55]
[Sidenote: p. 501.] 11. _Marcion._[56]
19. Marcion the Pontian, and Cerdo his teacher, also determined that
there are three principles of the All, a Good One, a Just One, and
Matter. But certain disciples of theirs add to this, saying that there
are a Good One, a Just One, a Wicked One, and Matter. But all [agree]
that the Good One created nothing wholly;[57] but they say that the
Just One, whom some name the Wicked One, but others merely the Just,
made all things out of the underlying Matter. For he made them not well
but absurdly.[58] For things must need be like their creator. Wherefore
they make use of the parable in the Gospels, saying, “A good tree
cannot make evil fruits,”[59] and so on, declaring that in this it is
said that things were devised wickedly by [the Just One]. And he says
that Christ is the son of the Good One and was sent for the salvation
of souls. Whom he calls [the] inner man, saying that He appeared as a
man, [Sidenote: p. 502.] but was not man, and as incarnate, but was
not incarnate, and was manifested in appearance [only], but underwent
neither birth nor suffering, but seemed [to do so]. And [Marcion] does
not wish that [the] flesh shall rise again. And, saying that marriage
is destruction, he leads his disciples to a very Cynical life, thinking
thereby to vex the Demiurge by abstaining from the things brought into
being or laid down by him.[60]
12. _Apelles._
20. But Apelles, the disciple of [Marcion] displeased with what was
said by his teacher, as we have before said, proposed by another
theory that there are four Gods, declaring that one is (good) whom the
Prophets knew not, but of whom Christ is the Son. And that another is
the Demiurge of the All, whom he does not wish to be a god, and another
a fiery one who is manifest, and yet another a wicked one: [all of]
whom he calls angels. And adding Christ to these, he says that He is
the fifth. But he gives heed to a book which he calls _Manifestations_
of a certain Philumene whom he thinks a prophetess. And he says
[Sidenote: p. 503.] that Christ did not receive the flesh from the
Virgin, but from the adjacent substance of the cosmos. Thus he has
written treatises[61] against the Law and the Prophets attempting to
discredit them as false speakers and ignorant of God. And he says, like
Marcion, that [all] flesh will be destroyed.[62]
13. _Cerinthus._
21. But Cerinthus, who had been trained in Egypt, would have it that
the cosmos did not come into being by the First God, but by a certain
angelic power far removed and standing apart from the Authority [set]
over the universals and ignorant of the God over all things. And he
says that Jesus was not begotten from a Virgin, but was the son of
Joseph and Mary in the same way as the rest of mankind, and that He
excelled all other men in righteousness, moderation and intelligence.
And that at the Baptism, there descended upon Him from the Authority
over the universals, the Christ in the form of a dove, and that He
then preached the unknown God and perfected his powers;[63] [Sidenote:
p. 504.] but that at the end of the passion the Christ fell away from
Jesus. And Jesus suffered, but the Christ remained passionless, being a
spirit of [the] Lord.[64]
14. _Ebionæi._
22. But the Ebionæi say that the cosmos came into being from the true
God; but speak of the Christ as does Cerinthus. And they live in
all things according to the Law of Moses, thus declaring themselves
justified.[65]
15. _Theodotus._
23. Theodotus the Byzantian brought in another heresy such as this,
declaring that the universals came into being by the true God. But he
says, like the Gnostics before described, that the Christ appeared in
some such fashion [as this]. He said that the Christ was a man akin to
all, but He differed [from others] in that He by the will of God was
born from a Virgin who had been overshadowed by the [Sidenote: p. 505.]
Holy Spirit. And that he was not incarnate in the Virgin, but at length
at the Baptism the Christ descended upon Jesus in the form of a dove,
whence they say He did not before then exercise powers. But he will not
have the Christ to be God. And so Theodotus.[66]
16. _Other Theodotians._
24. And others of them say all things like those aforesaid, altering
one single thing only in that they accept Melchizedek as some very
great power, declaring him to exist above every power. After whose
likeness they will have the Christ to be.[67]
17. _Phrygians._
25. But the Phrygians take the beginnings of their heresy from one
Montanus and Priscilla and Maximilla, thinking the wenches prophetesses
and Montanus a prophet. But [Sidenote: p. 506.] they are considered to
speak rightly in what they say about the beginning and the fashioning
of the All, and they receive not otherwise the things about the Christ.
But they stumble with those aforesaid to whose words they erringly give
heed rather than to the Gospels, and they prescribe new and unusual
fasts.
26. But others of them approaching the heresy of the Noetians think
in like manner concerning the wenches and Montanus, but blaspheme the
Father of the universals saying that He is at once Son and Father, seen
and unseen, begotten and unbegotten, mortal and immortal. These take
their starting-points from one Noetus.[68]
18. _Noetus._
27. And in the same way Noetus, being a Smyrnæan by birth, a garrulous
and versatile man, brought in this heresy, which from one Epigonus
reached Cleomenes and has so remained with his successors until now.
It says that the [Sidenote: p. 507.] Father and God of the universals
is one and that He made all things, and became invisible to the things
which are when He willed, and then appeared when he wished. And that
He is invisible when He is not seen; but visible when He is seen; and
unbegotten when He is not begotten, but begotten when He is begotten
from a Virgin; and passionless and immortal when He does not suffer
and die, but that when [the] Passion comes, He suffers and dies.
They think this Father is Himself called Son according to times and
circumstances.[69] The heresy of these persons Callistus confirmed,
whose life we have faithfully set forth. Who himself gave birth to a
heresy, taking starting-points from them, while himself confessing that
this Fashioner the All is the Father and God; but that He is spoken
of by name and named Son, while in substance He is (one Spirit). For
God, he says is a Spirit not other than the Logos nor the Logos than
God, and therefore this Person is divided in name indeed, but not in
substance. And he names this one God, and says that He was incarnated.
And he wishes the Son to be He who was seen and overcome according to
[Sidenote: p. 508.] the flesh, but the Father to be He who dwelt within
[Him]. He sometimes branches off to the heresy of Noetus and sometimes
to that of Theodotus, but holds nothing steadfastly. This now Callistus.
19. _Hermogenes._
28. But one Hermogenes having also wished to say something [new] said
that God made all things out of co-existent and underlying matter. For
that it is impossible to hold that God created existing things from
those which are not.[70]
20. _Elchasaitae._
29. But certain others, as if bringing in something new [and]
collecting things from all heresies, prepared a foreign book bearing
the name of one Elchasai. These in the same way [as their predecessors]
confess that the principles of the All came into being by God, but do
not confess Christ to be one. But they say that there is one on high
[Sidenote: p. 509.] who is often transferred[71] into [many] bodies,
and that he is now in Jesus. Likewise that at one time, this one was
born from God, and at another became [the] Spirit, and sometimes was
born from a Virgin and sometimes not. And that thereafter he is ever
transferred into [many] bodies, and is manifested in many according
to [the] times. And they use incantations and baptisms for their
confession of the elements.[72] And they are excited about astrology
and mathematics and (give heed) to magic (acts). And they say they
foreknow the future.[73]
21. [_Title lacking_].[74]
30. (Abraham being commanded) by God, migrates from Mesopotamia and
the city of Harran to the part now called Palestine and Judæa but then
Canaanitis, concerning which we have in part but not without care
handed down the [Sidenote: p. 510.] account in other discourses.[75]
Through this occurred the beginning of [the] increase [of population]
in Judæa, which got the name from Judah the fourth son of Jacob, of
whom it was also called the kingdom, through the royal race being from
him. (Abraham)[76] migrates from Mesopotamia (being 75 years old) and
being in his hundredth year (begat Isaac). (And Isaac being) 60 years
old begat Jacob. And Jacob [when] 87 years old begat Levi. But Levi
when 40 years old begat Kohath.[77] And Kohath [was 4] years old when
he went down with Jacob into Egypt. Therefore the whole time which
Abraham and all his race by Isaac dwelt in the land then called [the]
Canaanitis was 215 years.[78] And his (father) was Terah. This, one’s
[father] was Nahor, his Serug (his Zeu, his Peleg, his Eber) whence
(the Jews) are [Sidenote: p. 511.] called Hebrews. There were 72 (sons
of Abraham from whom also were 72) nations, whose names also we have
set forth in other books.[79] Nor did we omit this in its place as we
wished to show to the learned[80] our affection concerning the Divine
and the accurate knowledge concerning the Truth which we have painfully
acquired. But the father of this Eber was Shelah, and his Canaan,
and his Arphaxad, who was born to Shem; and his father was Noah in
whose time the flood over the whole world came to pass, which neither
Egyptians, nor Chaldæans, nor Greeks record. For to them the floods in
the time of Ogyges and Deacalion were [only] in places. Now in their
time[81] were 5 generations, or 435 years.[82] This [Noah] being a most
pious man and one who loved God, alone with [his] wife and children
and their three wives escaped the coming flood, being saved in an
ark, the measurements and remains of which, as we have set forth[83]
[elsewhere], are shown to this day in the [Sidenote: p. 512.] mountains
called Ararat which are near the land of the Adiabeni. It is then to be
observed by those who wish to give a painstaking account how plainly
it is shown that the God fearing race are older than all Chaldæans,
Egyptians, [or] Greeks. But what need is there to name here those
before Noah who both feared and spake with God, when to what has gone
before the witness of antiquity is sufficient?
31. But since it seems not unreasonable to show that those nations who
occupy themselves with philosophy[84] are later in date than they who
feared God, it is right to say both where their race came from, and
that when they migrated to these countries, they did not take a name
from them, but themselves gained [one] from those who first ruled[85]
and dwelt [there]. The three sons of Noah were Shem, Ham and Japhet.
From them the whole race of men multiplied and dwelt in every country.
For the word of God[86] was confirmed by them which said, “Increase
and multiply and fill the earth.”[87] So mighty was this one saying,
that 72 children were begotten by the 3 sons, family [Sidenote: p.
513.] by family, of whom 25 were Shem’s, 15 Japhet’s, and 32 Ham’s.
And the sons of Ham were, as has been said 32:--his were Canaan, from
whom the Canaanites, Misraim, from whom the Egyptians, Cush, from
whom the Ethiopians, Phut, from whom the Libyans. These in their own
speech unto this day are called by the common name of their ancestors
and even in the Greek are named by the names by which they have just
been called. But if it were shown that there were formerly none to
inhabit their countries, nor a beginning of [any] race[88] of men, yet
there are still these sons of Noah, a God-fearing man who was himself
a disciple of God-fearing men, thanks to which he escaped the great
although temporary threat of [the] waters. How then can it be denied
that there were God-fearing men earlier than all Chaldæans, Egyptians
[and] Greeks,[89] the father of which [last] was born to that Japhet
[and had the] name Jovan, whence [the] Greeks and Ionians? And if the
nations who occupy themselves with matters of philosophy are shown to
be altogether of much later date than the God-fearing race and the
Flood, will not the Barbarian [Sidenote: p. 514.] and whatever races
in the world are known and unknown, appear later than these? Wherefore
now, do ye Greeks, Egyptians and Chaldæans and every race of men master
this argument and learn what is the Divine and what His well-ordered
creation from us, the friends of God, who have not been trained in
dainty phrase, but in the knowledge of Truth and the practice of
moderation find words for His demonstration.[90]
32. One God is the First and Only One and Creator and Ruler of all. He
has no coæval, neither boundless chaos, nor immeasureable water, nor
solid earth, nor compact air, nor hot fire, nor subtle spirit, nor the
blue canopy of great heaven.[91] But He was One, alone with Himself,
who when He willed created the things which are, which at first were
not, save that He willed to create them as knowing of what they would
be. For foreknowledge also is present with Him. He fashioned first the
different principles of things to come--fire and spirit,[92] water and
earth,--from which different [principles] He made His creation. And
some [Sidenote: p. 515.] things He [made of] one substance and some
he bound together out of two, others of three and yet others of four.
And those that are of one were immortal, for dissolution does not dog
them, for that which is one will never be dissolved. But those [made]
from two or three or four [substances] are dissoluble, wherefore they
are called mortal. For death is called this, the dissolution of what
is bound together. We think we have now answered sufficiently those
who have sound perception, who, if for love of learning they will
enquire further into these substances and the causes of the fashioning
of all things, they will learn them by reading our book, treating of
“the Substance of the All.”[93] And I think that it is here enough
to set forth the causes from ignorance whereof the Greeks glorified
with dainty phrase the parts of the creation, but ignored the Creator.
Starting wherefrom the heresiarchs, transfiguring into like expressions
what was formerly said by [the Greeks] have composed laughable heresies.
33. This God, then, One and Over All having first conceived [Sidenote:
p. 516.] in His mind begat [the] Word, not a word in the sense of a
voice, but the indwelling Reason[94] of the All. He begot Him alone
from the things which are. For the Father Himself was what is, from
Whom was the Word, the cause of the begetting of things coming into
being, bearing within Himself the will of His begetter, not ignorant
of the thought of the Father. For from the time[95] of His coming
forth from Him who begat Him, becoming His first-born voice, He holds
within Himself the ideas conceived in His Father’s mind. Whence, on the
Father ordering the world to come into being, the Word completed it
in detail,[96] [thus] pleasing God. And the things which multiply by
generation, He formed male and female; but all those for service and
ministry he made either males who have no need of females or neither
male nor female. For when the first substances [Sidenote: p. 517.]
of these came into being [namely] Fire and Spirit, Earth and Water,
from the things that were not, neither male nor female things existed.
Nor could male and female have come forth from each of these, unless
the God who gave the command had willed that the Word should do this
service.[97] I confess that angels are [formed] of fire and I say that
no females are present with them. But I consider that Sun and Moon and
stars were in like manner [formed] of fire and spirit and are neither
male nor female. But I say that swimming animals were [formed] of water
and that winged ones are male and female.[98] For thus God willed and
commanded that the watery substance should be fruitful. In like manner,
serpents and wild beasts and all sorts of animals were [formed] from
earth and are male and female; for this the nature of begotten things
allowed. For whatever things He willed, those God created. These
He fashioned by the Word, for they could not have come into being
otherwise than they did. But when as He had willed He also created, He
called and designated them by name. Thereafter He fashioned the ruler
of them all, and equipped him from all substances brought together. Nor
did He wish to make a God and fail, nor an angel--be not deceived--but
[Sidenote: p. 518.] a man. For had God willed to make thee a God, He
could: thou hast the example of the Word. But He willed a man and
created thee a man. But if thou dost wish also to become a God, hearken
to the Creator and withstand Him not now, so that being found faithful
over a little, thou mayest be entrusted with much.[99]
Only the Word of this [God] is from Him. Wherefore He also is God,
being the substance of God. But the world is from nothing. Wherefore it
is not God and it will be dissolved[100] when the Creator wills. But
God who created makes nothing evil; but he creates it fair and good.
For He who creates is good. But man when he came into being was an
animal with free-will,[101] not having a ruling mind, nor dominating
all things by reflection and authority and power, but a slave[102]
and full of all contrary [desires].[103] Who, in that he is free to
choose produces evil, which when it is completed by accident is nothing
unless thou dost make [it].[104] For it is by the thinking and willing
something [Sidenote: p. 519.] evil, that it is named evil; which was
not from the beginning, but came into being later. [And] as man was
free to choose, a Law was laid down by God, not vainly. For if man were
not free to will or not to will, what need of a Law?[105] For the Law
is not decreed for a dumb beast, but a bridle and a whip; but to man
was appointed a commandment and a penalty in respect of what he was to
do and not to do. And [the] Law as to this was laid down of old through
righteous men. Nearer to our own times, a Law full of majesty and
justice was laid down through the Moses aforesaid, a steadfast man and
one who loved God.
All these things, the Word of God directs, the First-born Son of
[the] Father, the light-bringing voice before dawn.[106] Thereafter
there came into being righteous men who loved God. These were called
prophets from their showing beforehand the things to come.[107] To whom
word came not at one season [only], but through all generations the
utterances of things foretold was most clearly brought forward.[108]
[Sidenote: p. 520.] Nor did they merely give an answer to those present
there at the time, but through several generations also the things to
come were foreshadowed. [And this] because speaking of things past
they recalled them to mankind; but by showing what was then happening
they put away carelessness, and by foretelling the future have made
every one of us fearful by the sight of the fulfilment of prophecies
and the expectation of the future. Such is our faith, O all ye men who
are not persuaded by vain speeches, nor captured by sudden movings of
the heart, nor enchanted by plausible and eloquent words, but have not
been obdurate to words uttered by Divine power. And these things God
commanded [the] Word; and the Word speaking through [the prophets],
uttered them for the turning of man from disobedience and emancipating
him from the force of Fate, but calling him to liberty by his free
choice.[109]
The Father in the last days sent forth this Word, not speaking through
a prophet, and not wishing that the Word when proclaimed should be
darkly guessed at, but that He should be manifested to the very eyes
of all. He, I say, [Sidenote: p. 521.] (sent Him forth) that the
world when it beheld Him should be put to shame. For He did not give
commandment through the person of prophets, nor affright [the] soul by
an angel, but was Himself present and spake. Him we know to have taken
body from a Virgin and to have moulded[110] the old man through a new
formation. [We know] that He passed in life through every age,[111]
so that He might become a law for every age, and that His presence
might show forth His manhood as an example[112] to all men; and that
through Him it might be proved that God makes nothing evil, and that
man as master of himself can will or not will [evil], being capable
of both. We know, too, that this man came into being out of the same
material[113] as ourselves; for were He not of the same [matter] it
would be vain to order that the Teacher be imitated. For had that Man
chanced to be of another substance [than ours] why should he order me
who am weak by nature to do things like Himself? And [in that case]
how is He good and just? But in order that He might not be thought
different from us, He underwent toil, and was willing to hunger, and
denied not thirst,[114] and was stilled in sleep, and renounced not
suffering, and [Sidenote: p. 522.] submitted to death, and manifested
resurrection, sacrificing in all this His own manhood, so that thou
when suffering may not be faint-hearted, but mayst confess thyself a
man and expect also what the Father promised Him.
34. Such is the true word about the Divine.[115] O all ye men, Greeks
and Barbarians, Chaldæans and Assyrians, Egyptians and Libyans,
Indians and Ethiopians, Celts and ye army-leading Latins,[116] and
all ye dwellers in Europe, Asia and Libya.[117] To you I am become a
counsellor, being a disciple of the Word who loves man and myself a
lover of mankind, so that you may hasten to be taught by us who is
the real God and what His well-ordered creation. And that you give
not heed to the sophistries of artificial discourses,[118] nor to the
crazy promises of plagiarizing heretics, but to the august simplicity
of unboastful truth. Through the knowledge of which, you shall escape
the coming menace of the judgment of fire, and the unlighted vision of
gloomy Tartarus unillumined by the voice of the Word, and [Sidenote: p.
523.] the boiling of the Lake of the eternal Gehenna of flame, and the
ever-threatening eye of the angels punished in Tartarus,[119] and the
worm which through the filth of the body turns towards the body which
threw it forth as for food. And these things thou shalt escape when
thou hast been taught the God Who Is. And thou shalt have an immortal
body together with an incorruptible soul. And thou shalt receive the
kingdom of the heavens, who whilst on earth didst also recognize the
heavenly King. But thou shall speak with God and be joint heir with
Christ, not enslaved by desires nor sufferings nor diseases.[120] For
thou [wilt] have become God. For whatever sufferings thou underwent as
man, thou hast shown that thou art a man; but whatever is appurtenant
to a God, that God has promised to bestow, because thou hast been made
divine, since thou hast been begotten immortal. This is the [true]
“Know Thyself,” the knowledge of the Creator God. For to him who knows
himself has occurred the being known to Him by whom [Sidenote: p.
524.] he is called. Wherefore now, O men, be not your own enemies,
nor hesitate to turn again. For Christ is the God over all, Who has
arranged to wash away iniquity from among men, and to make anew the old
man who from the beginning was called His image, thus showing forth
His love towards thee. Having hearkened to Whose august precepts, and
having become a good imitator of the Good One, thou wilt be like unto
and be honoured by Him. For God asks no alms,[121] and has made thee
God for His own glory.
FOOTNOTES
[Footnote 1: The promises before noted at the end of Books VIII and IX
to declare the Doctrine of Truth says nothing of these epitomes, nor
do they always accord with the earlier Books which may be supposed to
be here epitomized. For a suggested explanation of this discrepancy
see Introduction, Vol. I, pp. 18, 19 _supra_. It should also be noted
that, while the author omits here any detailed mention of the contents
of Books II, III, and IV, he can hardly have had Book I before his
eyes at the time of writing, or he would have referred to it directly
instead of quoting as he does from Sextus Empiricus. As has been
said in the Introduction, the “epitome of the heresies” bears closer
relation to Books V-IX, although it omits several heresies included in
the epitomized books. That the writer, if not Hippolytus himself, is
at any rate writing in his name, is plain from the wording of chap.
5, _infra_, and we can hardly suppose a forger so reckless as not to
have read the earlier Books before attempting to epitomize them. On
the other hand, it is perfectly conceivable that Hippolytus had in his
possession notes from which his earlier Books were written, and that
of these only a part remained when he set to work to write Book X. It
would seem, therefore, that only some such hypothesis as that given in
the Introduction really fits the case.
As to the style of the Book it does not differ materially from that
of the others, save in one particular. This is the frequent omission
of the definite article, which is so frequent as to arouse suspicion
that the scribe may have been here translating from a Latin rather than
copying from a Greek original.]
[Footnote 2: This is the main reason for supposing that this Book is
that called the _Labyrinth_ which Photius says was by the author of
the work _On the Universe_, attributed by the list on the chair to
Hippolytus. Cf. Salmon in _D.C.B._, “Hippolytus Romanus.”]
[Footnote 3: All these were probably described in the missing Books II
and III, together with Book IV, _supra_.]
[Footnote 4: ἀκαλλώπιστος.]
[Footnote 5: Book I only is concerned with the teachings of the Greek
philosophers; but Books II and III must, according to the promise in
Vol. I, pp. 63, 64, have contained an exposition of the mystic rites
and astrological doctrine, and Book IV is entirely taken up with magic
and divination. This is confirmed by the statement in Vol. I, p. 119.
Hippolytus must therefore have forgotten this when writing Book X, or
at any rate did not have the earlier Books before him.]
[Footnote 6: From here to the end of the section on p. 479 Cr., is a
copy from Sextus Empiricus’ work, _Adversus Physicos_, c. 10. So close
is this that we are able by its aid to correct by it the faulty text of
Sextus, and _vice versâ_. Sextus, as a sceptic, was of course as much
opposed to the study of nature as Hippolytus, and was therefore only
interested in showing the discrepancies among its teachers. But how
does this make the quotation from him an “epitome”?]
[Footnote 7: Not mentioned in Book I.]
[Footnote 8: Karsten, VIII, p. 45.]
[Footnote 9: _Il._, XIV, 201.]
[Footnote 10: _Il._, VII, 99.]
[Footnote 11: Karsten, IX, p. 49.]
[Footnote 12: Said to be a quotation from Euripides’ _Hymns_.]
[Footnote 13: Not mentioned in Book I.]
[Footnote 14: Cf. pp. 83, 84 _supra_.]
[Footnote 15: Not mentioned in Book I.]
[Footnote 16: Not mentioned in Book I.]
[Footnote 17: φυσιολογία.]
[Footnote 18: Cf. p. 371 Cr.]
[Footnote 19: In this chapter on the Naassenes, Hippolytus may be
supposed to have had before him either the whole of Book V or the
notes from which it was written. We may see, therefore, from this,
what his idea of an epitome is. He does not try to condense his former
statements so as to give us a bird’s-eye view of the whole heresy,
but picks out from them a few sentences which seem to him of special
importance. Hence it is only useful to us as a means of checking the
text, and brings us no nearer to an appreciation of the doctrines of
the sect.]
[Footnote 20: Cf. Vol. I, p. 69 _supra_, where this Ademes is called
Akembes and both he and Euphrates are mentioned as astrologers only. In
Vol. I, p. 149 also the order is reversed and Ademes is called Celbes.
Theodoret, _Haer. Fab._, I, 17, quotes this chapter almost _verbatim_,
thereby showing that it was Book X and not Book V which he copied.]
[Footnote 21: Words in ( ) added from Theodoret, _ubi cit._]
[Footnote 22: Cf. Vol. I, pp. 146-148 _supra_, which this chapter
follows closely.]
[Footnote 23: Words in ( ) added from Vol. I, p. 161 _supra_. Nearly
four lines are wanting here which can be filled from the page quoted.]
[Footnote 24: Throughout this chapter, the summarizer copies closely
the former account of the Sethians, for which see Vol. I, pp. 160-169
_supra_. I have not thought it worth while to draw attention to the
slight differences in readings, but it is plain that the meaning in
both cases was as obscure to the summarizer as it is to us.]
[Footnote 25: φρόνησις. This is evidently taken from the account of
Simon’s doctrine in Book VI, c. 12 (p. 6 _supra_), which says that
the unseen parts of the fire have φρόνησις “and a share of mind,”
without mention of the seen parts. The rest of this chapter, with the
exception of the last sentence attributing supreme power to Simon, is
substantially, but not exactly word for word, identical with c. 12 of
Book VI. Cf. pp. 247, 250 and 259 Cr.]
[Footnote 26: The only ground for this assertion seems to be Simon’s
statement to Helen of Tyre (see p. 15 _supra_), that he was the “Power
over all things,” which seems to be explained by that on p. 12 _supra_,
that the Power which Stands, etc., is _potentially_ in all things.]
[Footnote 27: πρωτογενέτειραν. While in Book VI, of which these
chapters profess to be a summary, the author describes Nous and
Aletheia with their projectors as the descendants of Bythos alone, he
here gives an account of the rival opinion that Bythos had a spouse
called Sigê, and he reckons her in with her descendants so as to make
up the number of eight.]
[Footnote 28: This is, of course, the Horos of Book VI.]
[Footnote 29: This word is also used in Book VI (see p. 286 Cr.), as
the exact converse of the Pleroma or Fulness.]
[Footnote 30: It is curious that throughout this chapter there is no
attempt to quote directly from Book VI, and that it is evidently the
opinions of the Italic school of Valentinus and not the Anatolic that
the author is here summarizing. In the next chapter, as will be seen,
he resumes direct quotations.]
[Footnote 31: So far, the author is transcribing almost _verbatim_ the
statements in Book VII, cf. pp. 346-350 Cr.]
[Footnote 32: This is not said of the Holy Spirit in Book VII, cf. pp.
70, 71 _supra_.]
[Footnote 33: This, too, is a new statement, although it may perhaps be
implied from what is said on pp. 72, 73 and 76 _supra_.]
[Footnote 34: So p. 76 _supra_.]
[Footnote 35: Save as before noted, everything in this chapter is
to be found in the account of Basilides given in Book VII. The few
exceptions show that the summarizer had assimilated its contents and
an intelligent knowledge of Basilides’ teaching. He entirely omits,
however, the prediction of the Great Ignorance.]
[Footnote 36: The summarizer here takes Justinus from among the Ophites
of Book V, where he is to be found in the earlier part of the text, and
puts him after Basilides.]
[Footnote 37: Reading αὐτῇς for αὐτοῦ.]
[Footnote 38: These are omitted from the text, possibly because the
summarizer did not wish to repeat names which might be used in magic.
Cruice supplies them in his text from Book V, Vol. I, p. 173 _supra_,
which see.]
[Footnote 39: The words in round brackets ( ) are as elsewhere in this
chapter supplied by Cruice from Book V.]
[Footnote 40: Cf. Vol. I, p. 175 _supra_.]
[Footnote 41: There is nothing in this chapter which is not taken from
the account of Justinus’ doctrines in Book V, nor anything to show that
the summarizer had any knowledge of these except from this.]
[Footnote 42: τινὰς τινῶν πρώτους!]
[Footnote 43: So the Codex. Cruice has γεννητόν, “begotten,” but I see
no reason for the alteration.]
[Footnote 44: κόσμησιν. Perhaps “adornment.”]
[Footnote 45: ἰδέαι.]
[Footnote 46: Cf. p. 102 _supra_.]
[Footnote 47: ἐκτύπωμα.]
[Footnote 48: ἰδέαι. As before he means “patterns” or “exemplars.”]
[Footnote 49: παραγεννηθῆναι.]
[Footnote 50: Here again there is nothing which cannot be found in Book
VIII (see pp. 99-105 _supra_), from which this chapter is evidently
taken. As has before been said, the summarizer to arrive at this has
omitted all mention of Satornilus, Menander and Carpocrates, while the
other systems mentioned in Book VII, he has placed after the Docetae
instead of before them.]
[Footnote 51: The summarizer here uses for the first time in our text
the expression “First Man,” which plays so large a part in later
heresies such as Manichæism. For its early appearance in Western Asia
and its influence see Bousset’s _Hauptprobleme der Gnosis_, c. 4, “Der
Urmensch,” and _Forerunners_, I, p. lxi, and II, pp. 292, 293.]
[Footnote 52: πάθη. He evidently refers to the ten plagues as on p. 109
_supra_.]
[Footnote 53: He omits the “My God ... my understanding” of the letter
to Theophrastus, on p. 110 _supra_.]
[Footnote 54: He alters the ἐξιδιοποιούμενος (cf. p. 415 Cr.) to
κατιδιοποιούμενος--a fair proof of the inaccuracy of the scribe. Except
for the inaccuracies noted, however, there is no statement in this
summary which cannot be found in Book VIII, pp. 106-111 _supra_.]
[Footnote 55: For these few lines, the summarizer has evidently not
taken the trouble to refer to the author’s statements about Tatian in
Book VIII, p. 111 _supra_. He now omits all reference to Justin Martyr,
there said to be Tatian’s teacher, and to Tatian’s peculiar ideas about
the salvation of Adam; while he introduces a special world-creating
aeon not mentioned elsewhere.]
[Footnote 56: Here he omits the heresies of the Quartodecimans and
the Encratites, which receive notice in Book VIII, pp. 113, 115,
116 _supra_, and passes on to Marcion, who was a contemporary of
Valentinus. It is plain, therefore, that he does not attempt in the
summary to keep either to order of date or to that of the earlier
books.]
[Footnote 57: οὐδὲν ὅλως πεποιηκέναι. So the Codex. Some word seems to
be missing; but perhaps the passage should read οὐδὲν τῶν ὅλων, “none
of the universals.”]
[Footnote 58: ἀλόγως, “unreasonably.”]
[Footnote 59: Matt. vii. 18.]
[Footnote 60: This also is certainly not taken from the chapters on
Marcion in Book VII, pp. 82-90 _supra_, which are mainly devoted to an
attempt to prove Marcion to have plagiarized from Empedocles. Nor is it
from Irenæus or from the tractate _Adversus omnes hæreses_.]
[Footnote 61: συντάγματα, “summaries”?]
[Footnote 62: The substance of this can be found in the account of
Apelles in Book VII, pp. 96-97 _supra_; but the summarizer does not use
the phrases of the earlier book, and he can hardly have had it before
him.]
[Footnote 63: As before (p. 389 Cr.), Macmahon here translates καὶ
δυνάμεις ἐπιτελέσαι, “he wrought miracles.”]
[Footnote 64: This, on the other hand, is taken almost _verbatim_ from
c. 33 of Book VII (pp. 92, 93 _supra_), the few slight differences
between the two chapters being not other than a careless scribe might
be expected to make.]
[Footnote 65: This also from Book VII, p. 93 _supra_, but slightly
condensed.]
[Footnote 66: This also appears to be condensed from the account of
Theodotus in Book VII, pp. 93, 94 _supra_. The summarizer adds to it
the alleged denial by Theodotus of Christ’s divinity, which does not
appear in Book VII.]
[Footnote 67: This, too, is not inconsistent with the account of “other
Theodotians” in Book VII, pp 94, 95 _supra_, but omits all reference to
the Nicolaitans.]
[Footnote 68: Here the summarizer reverts to Book VIII, pp. 113, 114
_supra_, from which his account of the Phrygians or Montanists appears
to be taken. The phrases used are not identical, and while Book VIII
merely says that the Montanist heresy agrees with the Patripassianism
of the Noetian, the Summary declares that the first was absolutely
derived from the second.]
[Footnote 69: κατὰ καιροὺς καλούμενον πρὸς τὰ συμβαίνοντα. Cf. the
καλούμενον κατὰ χρόνων τροπήν, p. 434 Cr. Otherwise this chapter seems
to be a condensed paraphrase rather than a series of extracts from
Book IX, the summarizer having here added together the “heresies” so
called of Noetus and Callistus. As mentioned in the Introduction, he
is careful not to mention that Callistus was a Pope, and in the last
sentence but one, he omits the name of Sabellius which is mentioned in
the earlier book. Cf. p. 130 _supra_.]
[Footnote 70: He now reverts to Hermogenes, against whom Tertullian
wrote, and who must therefore in the time of Callistus have long been
dead. The few lines given here correspond to the opening sentences of
the chapter on this heretic in Book VIII, p. 112 _supra_, which see.]
[Footnote 71: μεταγγιζόμενον, lit., “poured” as from one vessel into
another--a considerable amplification of the statement in Book IX, p.
134 _supra_.]
[Footnote 72: Water and Earth are the only two “elements” mentioned in
the exorcisms attributed to the Elchesaites in Book IX, p. 135 _supra_.]
[Footnote 73: The statements in this account of the Elchesaites are all
to be found in the description of them in Book IX, pp. 132-138 _supra_;
but the same words are not used, and there is nothing to show that the
summarizer had the earlier book before him at the time of writing.]
[Footnote 74: Cruice suggests that the considerable lacuna that there
evidently is here was filled by a summary of the chapters on the Jewish
sects with which Book IX ends (see pp. 455-472 Cr.). This hardly seems
to correspond with the form of what is left; but it is not impossible
that we have here excerpts from the book on chronology which we know
Hippolytus to have written. Another suggestion is that what follows is
from his _Commentary on Genesis_, of which a few fragments survive.]
[Footnote 75: Were these ἑτέροι λόγοι the treatise “On the All” which
Hippolytus wrote?]
[Footnote 76: As throughout the words in round brackets ( ) are
supplied by Cruice. In this chapter they are mainly taken from Gen.
xi., which see.]
[Footnote 77: Καὰθ. In all these names I have used the spelling of the
A. V. as being more familiar to the general reader than that of the
LXX.]
[Footnote 78: If Abraham did not beget Isaac until he had been
twenty-five years in Canaan, the figures would be for Abraham
twenty-five, for Isaac sixty, for Jacob eighty-seven, for Levi forty,
for Kohath four. But this makes 216 at least.]
[Footnote 79: So the fragment of the _Chronicon_ attributed to
Hippolytus in Fabricius, S. Hippolyt. _Opera_, p. 50, which perhaps
goes to show the authorship of the Summary.]
[Footnote 80: φιλομαθέσιν.]
[Footnote 81: ἐπὶ τούτων, that is reckoning from Noah to Eber.]
[Footnote 82: Cruice would read 495 years.]
[Footnote 83: ἐκτεθείμεθα. The phrase that he uses everywhere in the
book for statements in _this_ work. See n. on previous page.]
[Footnote 84: σοφία. This is in pursuance of Hippolytus’ favourite
theory that philosophy was the source of all heresy.]
[Footnote 85: ἀρξάντων. Macmahon translates “were born,” but I think
the word is never used in that sense by Hippolytus.]
[Footnote 86: ῥῆμα Θεοῦ. An unusual phrase here.]
[Footnote 87: Gen. i, 23.]
[Footnote 88: Reading γένους with the Codex instead of the γένος of
Cruice.]
[Footnote 89: Because these “God-fearing men” were before the Flood,
and the others could only have descended from Shem, Ham or Japhet.]
[Footnote 90: This seems to be the author’s meaning, but the reading is
not very well settled. Cruice translates _qui non elegantibus verbis
divina coluimus_, which Macmahon follows.]
[Footnote 91: This is, of course, an allusion to the theories of the
“Barbarians” on the Deity set out in Book IV. Cf. Vol. I, p. 104
_supra_.]
[Footnote 92: It is curious that throughout this chapter he uses
“spirit” as the fourth element instead of “air.” So Photius, quoting
from the work “On the All,” which is attributed to Hippolytus.]
[Footnote 93: This work is known to us by the list on the chair
mentioned in the Introduction, and by a notice by Photius, who seems
to have read the work under the name of Josephus. Cf. Salmon in _D. C.
B._, s.n. “Hippolytus Romanus.”]
[Footnote 94: This Λόγος ἐνδιάθετος which Philo distinguishes from
the Λόγος προφορικός seems to have been a phrase first adopted into
Christian theology by Theophilus of Antioch.]
[Footnote 95: ἅμα.]
[Footnote 96: τὸ κατὰ ἕν.]
[Footnote 97: ὑπουργῇ.]
[Footnote 98: Like most of the ancients, Hippolytus does not know that
fish have sex.]
[Footnote 99: Cf. Matt. xxv. 21, 23; Luke xix. 17.]
[Footnote 100: ἐπιδέχεται λύσιν, “receives dissolution.”]
[Footnote 101: αὐτεξούσιον, “his own authority”?]
[Footnote 102: _i. e._ to his passions. See p. 178 _infra_.]
[Footnote 103: πάντα ἔχον τὰ ἐναντία.]
[Footnote 104: So Cruice. Macmahon says, “which evil is not consummated
except you actually commit some piece of wickedness,” But the reading
is very uncertain.]
[Footnote 105: τί καὶ νόμος ὡρίζετο, “why was the Law enacted?”]
[Footnote 106: πρὸ ἑωσφόρου, “Before the Morning Star.” Cf. 2 Peter i.
18, 19.]
[Footnote 107: διὰ τὸ προφαίνειν. The real derivation is from πρόφημι.]
[Footnote 108: Cruice points out the likeness between this doctrine
of the Word speaking through the Prophets, and that with which Origen
begins his treatise, Περὶ Ἀρχῶν (I, § 1), that before the Incarnation
“Christ, the Word of God, was in Moses and the prophets.” It was
doubtless this, and the likeness between the theory of the origin of
evil as given on pp. 518, 519 Cr. of our text, and that of Origen
_in Joann_, II, 7, 8, which caused some commentator to write in the
margin of the Codex, Ὠριγένης καὶ Ὠριγένους δόξα: “Origen and Origen’s
opinions.” The words used in the two cases are too unlike to suggest
any identity of authorship or conscious borrowing; but it is perfectly
probable that Origen when in Rome communicated with Hippolytus as head
of the Greek-speaking community there, and that they had many ideas
in common. This would account at once for the likeness between the
passages noted and for the confusion between Hippolytus and Origen
as the author of the _Philosophumena_, while it throws new light on
Origen’s condemnation for heresy.]
[Footnote 109: ἑκουσίῳ προαιρέσει.]
[Footnote 110: Reading with Cruice πεφυρακότα for the πεφορηκότα of
Miller. Although Miller’s reading accords with the Scriptural “put on
the old man,” the allusion is evidently to the φυράμα of a few lines
lower down.]
[Footnote 111: This is evidently an allusion to the extraordinary
theory of Hippolytus’ master, Irenæus (Book II, c. 33, § 3, p. 331,
Harvey), that Christ having suffered at 30 years old lived and taught
after the Resurrection until He was “40 or 50,” thus “passing through
every age.” Cf. _Forerunners_, II, p. 61 and note.]
[Footnote 112: σκόπον, “arm” or “goal.”]
[Footnote 113: φυράμα, lit., “dough” or plastic substance.]
[Footnote 114: An allusion to the Word on the Cross.]
[Footnote 115: περὶ τὸν Θεῖον.]
[Footnote 116: It is curious that he does not call them Romans.]
[Footnote 117: The Greek name for the province called by the Romans
Africa.]
[Footnote 118: He is here repeating the phrase used on p. 150, with
which he begins this Book. Its repetition shows the continuity of this
last and that it was all written at the same time and by the same
author.]
[Footnote 119: Ταρταρούχων ἀγγέλων κολαστῶν. Tartaruchian is a Coptic
form. See Budge’s _Miscellaneous Texts of Upper Egypt_, 1915, p. 590.]
[Footnote 120: ὁμιλητης Θεοῦ, Cr. _familiaris_, Macm., “companion of.”]
[Footnote 121: οὐ πτωχεύει. The phrase has given much concern to
commentators. Cruice suggests δὲ γὰρ πολυωρεῖ, “has a great esteem
for thee.” Wordsworth translates “has a longing for thee.” Macmahon
“(by such signal condescension) does not diminish aught of the dignity
of His divine perfection.” The phrase is probably an allusion to the
heathen notion formally stated by Aelius Aristides and others that the
gods _had need_ of the sacrifices of mortals.]
INDEX
Adam of Cabala, i. 120 _n._ 6;
the first man, _ap._ Chaldæans, i. 122;
arch-man of Samothrace, i. 132;
made by Jaldabaoth and his sons, _ap._ Ophites, i. 122 _n._ 3.
_See_ Tatian
Adamas, supreme god of Naassenes, i. 120;
the “unsubdued,” epithet of Hades, Dionysos and Attis, i. 120 _n._ 6;
called the arch-man, i. 128, 129;
Isaiah’s words attributed to, i. 134
Adonis, Assyrian name of Attis, i. 124
Aetius, _Philosophumena_ attributed to, i. 5;
his _de Placitis Philosoph._ quoted, i. 39 _n._ 3, 43 _n._ 1, 56 _n._ 1
Aipolos = goatherd according to Phrygians, i. 137
Akembes, the Carystian, joint founder of Peratic heresy, i. 69, 149; ii.
154.
_See_ Euphrates
Alcibiades, of Apamea. _See_ Elchesaites
Alcinous, chief source of Hippolytus for Plato’s doctrines, i. 51 _n._ 3
Alés, Adhémar d’, his _Théologie de St. Hippolyte_ quoted, i. 66 _n._ 1
Amygdalus, Phrygian name of Attis, i. 140
Anaxagoras, his teaching, i. 44-46
Anaximander, his teaching, i. 42, 43
Anaximenes, his teaching, i. 43, 44
Andronicus the Peripatetic, quoted by Sethiani, i. 167
Apelles, follower of Marcion. His tenets, ii. 96, 97;
his prophetess Philumena, ii. 96;
summary of doctrines of, ii. 166
Apocatastasis, return of worlds to Deity, ii. 75 _n._ 4
Apparitions of gods, how produced by magicians, i. 97, 100
Apsethus the Libyan, story of, ii. 3, 4
Archelaus, his teaching, i. 46, 47
Aristotle, i. 16;
his teaching, i. 55-57;
his _Categories_, i. 55 _n._ 5;
his Quintessence, i. 56 _n._ 1; ii. 72 _n._ 4;
phrase of, used by Simon M., ii. 11 _n._ 4;
Basilides’ tenets attributed to, ii. 62-66. _See_ Plato
Arithmomancy, i. 83-87
Armellini attributes _Philosophumena_ to Novatian, i. 6
Arnold, Prof. E. V., his _Roman Stoicism_ quoted, i. 57 _n._ 3, 127
_n._ 3, 136 _n._ 5; ii. 45 _n._ 7, 79 _n._ 6
Asclepiades, i. 19; ii. 152
Assyrians = Syrians, i. 123 _n._ 6;
teach triune nature of Deity, _ib._
Astrology, source of heresy, i. 34;
the Chaldæan system of, i. 67-69;
folly of, i. 70-75, 113;
zodiacal types of, i. 88-91
Astronomers, calculations of, i. 76-83;
Hippolytus’ contempt for, i. 82
Athenæus, his _Deipnosophistæ_ quoted, i. 108 _n._ 3
Attis, legend of, i. 118 _n._ 1;
hymns to, sung in Mysteries of great Mother, i. 141, 142;
names of: Adonis, Osiris, Moon, Sophia, Adamna, Corybas, Papas,
Aipolos, Amygdalus, Syrictas, _ib._
Babylonians, say god is Darkness, _ap._ Hippolytus, i. 104
Baptism, in primitive Church followed by milk and honey, i. 136 _n._ 9
Barbelo, the earth-goddess, of Gnostics, i. 139 _n._ 5
_Baruch_, book of. _See_ Justinus
Basilides, i. 13, 14, 16;
his tenets, ii. 59-79;
hearer of Glaucias, ii. 59 _n._ 1;
of Matthias, ii. 66;
his son Isidore, _ib._;
his God-who-is-Not, ii. 67.
The Panspermia, ii. 68;
Ascension of First Sonhood, ii. 69;
of Second Sonhood, ii. 70;
the Boundary Spirit, _ib._;
the Great Ruler and his greater Son, ii. 71, 72;
the second ruler or Hebdomad, ii. 73;
descent of the Gospel, ii. 75;
the 365 heavens and Habrasax, ii. 76;
light which shines upon Jesus and His Passion, _ib._;
Apocatastasis of Formlessness and Mission of Jesus, ii. 77-79;
the great ignorance, ii. 77;
summary of doctrines of, ii. 159-161.
_See_ Simon of Cyrene, Aristotle
Baubo. _See_ Hecate
Baur, Chr. F., attributes _Philosophumena_ to Caius the presbyter, i. 6
Beelzebuth, made from perplexity of Sophia, _ap._ Valentinus, ii. 31;
name parody of Jabezebuth, ii. 31 _n._ 2
Benn, Alfred W., his _Philosophy of Greece_ quoted, i. 37 _n._ 6, 43
_n._ 1
Bigourdan, G., his _L’Astronomie: Evolution des Idées_, etc., quoted,
i. 80 _n._ 3
Blastus, heretic mentioned by pseudo-Tertullian, i. 13
Bouché-Leclercq, A., his _L’Astrologie Grecque_ quoted, i. 67 _n._ 1, 74
_n._ 5; 108 _n._ 2, 148 _n._ 4
Bousset, Prof. Wilhelm, his _Hauptprobleme der Gnosis_ quoted, i. 123
_n._ 2; ii. 80 _n._ 2, 163 _n._ 7
Brachmans, their lives and teaching, i. 60-61; ii. 99 _n._ 1
Brandt, Prof. A. S. H. W. _See_ Elchesaites
Brimo, name of Demeter in Mysteries, i. 138
Bruce, the, Papyrus, i. 3 _n._ 1;
quoted, ii. 12 _n._ 2
Buddhism, known to Clement of Alexandria, ii. 59 _n._ 1
Budge, Sir Ernest A. W. T., his _Miscellaneous Coptic Texts_ quoted, i.
30; ii. 178 _n._ 1
Bunsen, Baron von, his _Hippolytus and his Age_, i. 5
Cabala, the Jewish process of _gematria_, i. 131 _n._ 1;
explanation of, ii. 40 _n._ 3;
measurements in, ii. 133 _n._ 4
Caius the presbyter, _Philosophumena_ attributed to, i. 6
Callistus, Pope (218-223 A.D.), i. 3, 5, 7, 13, 17, 19, 29;
leans towards heresy of Noetus, ii. 118;
his life and tenets, ii. 124-132;
fails with Sabellius, ii. 124;
calls Hippolytus’ party ditheists, ii. 125, 129;
formerly slave to Carpophorus, ii. 125;
his misdeeds and flight, ii. 126;
condemned to mill by Carpophorus, _ib._;
makes riot in synagogue and sent to mines by Fuscianus, ii. 127;
released by Victor and Marcia, ii. 128, 129;
promoted to charge of cemetery by Zephyrinus, ii. 128;
excommunicates Sabellius, ii. 129;
his leanings towards Sabellius and Theodotus, ii. 130;
favours laxity of morals in Church, ii. 130-132;
and second baptism, ii. 132
Carpocrates, i. 17;
his tenets, ii. 90-92;
assigns sinless soul to Jesus, ii. 91;
says all men may be Christs, _ib._;
lawlessness of followers of, ii. 91-92.
_See_ Magic
Carpophorus. _See_ Callistus
Caulacau, used with Saulasau and Zeesar by Naassenes, i. 131;
Adamas identified with, _ib._;
name in which Saviour descended, _ib._ _n._ 6
Cerdo, i. 16;
teacher of Marcion, ii. 95, 96
Cerinthus, i. 17;
his tenets, ii. 92, 93;
adoptionist views of, ii. 93;
summary of doctrines of, ii. 166
Chaldæans, horoscopy of, described, i. 67-76
Charles, R. H., his _Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of O. T._ quoted, i.
154
Cicero, quoted, i. 68 _n._ 1, 107 _n._ 2
Clement of Alexandria, i. 11;
quoted, i. 144 _n._ 2, 146 _n._ 1; ii. 12 _n._ 5, 20 _n._ 1, 78 _n._
8, 105 _n._ 4, 122 _n._ 3
Cleomenes, preacher of Noetian heresy, ii. 118, 123
Colarbasus, his arithmetical heresy, i. 83;
name of, ii. 57 _n._ 4
Constellation figures, interpretation of, i. 107-114
Corybas, god of Phrygians, i. 133;
his legend, _ib._ _n._ 5
Cruice, Abbé Patrice M., _Philosophumena_, etc., i. 4 _n._ 5;
_Études sur les P._, i. 12 _n._ 2
Cumont, Franz, his _Textes et Monuments de Mithra_ quoted, i. 98 _n._ 5;
_Les Mystères de Mithra_, _ib._;
_Recherches sur le Manichéisme_, i. 110 _n._ 2;
_Cosmogonie Manichéenne_, i. 176 _n._ 5
Cybele, or Great Mother, worship of, i. 3;
legend of, i. 118 _n._ 1.
_See_ Attis, Naassenes, Ophites, Rhea
Cyphi, Egyptian incense used in magic, i. 92
Demiurge, or architect of Universe;
fiery god of Naassenes, i. 128;
made from fear of Sophia, _ap._ Valentinus, ii. 30
Democritus, his teaching, i. 48, 49
Devil, ruler of this world made from grief of Sophia, _ap._ Valentinus,
ii. 31
Didymus of Alexandria, _Philosophumena_ attributed to, i. 5
Diels, Hermann, edits Book I. of _Philosophumena_, i. 31 _n._ 1
Diodorus of Eretria, mentioned by no other author, i. 38 _n._ 6
Diogenes Laertius, source of Hippolytus’ summary of philosophies,
i. 64 _n._ 2;
quoted, i. 35 _n._ 7, 36 _nn._ 2, 3; 37 _n._ 6; 40 _nn._ 2, 3; 41
_nn._ 2, 3; 42 _n._ 1; 44 _nn._ 1, 3; 48 _nn._ 3, 4; 54 _n._ 1; 56
_nn._ 1, 2; 58 _n._ 1; 59 _nn._ 1, 3;
mentions Gymnosophists and Druids, 60 _n._ 1
Docetae, i. 15, 17;
their tenets, ii. 99-105;
interpretation of story of fig-tree, ii. 99, 100.
And of Parable of Sower, ii. 101;
views on Annunciation and Passion of Jesus, ii. 104;
probably Valentinian, ii. 105 _n._ 4;
summary of doctrines of, ii. 162, 163
Döllinger, Dr. Ignaz, i. 6, 7;
his Hippolytus and Callistus quoted, ii. 124 _n._ 1; 125 _n._ 3; 126
_nn._ 4, 6; 127 _nn._ 1, 2, 4; 128 _nn._ 4, 5; 129 _n._ 4; 130
_nn._ 1, 7; 131 _n._ 6
Dositheus, a Samaritan heretic, i. 13, 14
Druids, Pythagoreans, i. 61, 62.
_See_ Diogenes Laertius
Duchesne, Mgr. Louis, his _Histoire Ancienne de l’Église_ quoted, i.
6, 7; ii. 124 _n._ 1; 125 _n._ 7
Duncker, Ludwig, _Philosophumena_, etc., i. 4
Ebionites, their tenets, ii. 93;
summary of doctrines of, ii. 167.
_See_ Mughtasila
Ecphantus, his teaching, i. 50
Edem (Eden), garden of, compared to brain, _ap._ Naassenes, i. 143;
river of, compared to serpent, _ap._ Peratæ, i. 155;
to four senses of man, _ap._ Simon Magus, ii. 10;
name of Israel wife of Elohim, _ap._ Justinus, i. 175
Egypt = the body, _ap._ Naassenes, i. 130;
and Peratæ, i. 155
Egyptians, used for Alexandrians, i. 40 _n._ 1;
astrology of, 48 n. 4;
“Wisdom” of, i. 104-107;
_Gospel accdg. to_, quoted, i. 123
Elchesaites, i. 14, 17;
Brandt’s _Elchesai_, ii. 132 _n._ 3;
Alcibiades introduces heresy of, into Rome, ii. 133;
the _Book of Elchesai_ quoted, _ib._;
their belief in transmigration, ii. 134;
repeated baptisms and spells used by, ii. 135, 136;
prophecies of, ii. 137;
summary of doctrines of, ii. 169, 170.
_See_ Mughtasila
Eleusis (Mysteries of), words used in, i. 129;
rites of, described, i. 138, 139
Empedocles, i. 9, 16;
his teaching, i. 40, 41
Encratites, their tenets, ii. 114, 115;
their connection with Tatian, ii. 114 _n._ 5;
extreme asceticism of, ii. 115
Epicurus, his teaching, i. 58, 59
Epiphanes (supposed follower of Valentinus), his tenets, ii. 38
Epiphanius, quoted, i. 5, 11, 122 _n._ 3; ii. 39 _n._ 7, 48 _n._ 2,
49 _n._ 1, 76 _n._ 1, 80 _nn._ 2, 3; 90 _n._ 4, 92 _nn._ 3, 4; 93
_n._ 7, 95 _n._ 4, 113 _n._ 6, 118 _n._ 1, 132 _n._ 3
Essenes, Book of Job attributed to, i. 109 _n._ 2;
Ebionites and, 110 _n._ 3.
_See_ Jews, Mughtasila, Zealots
Euphrates (the Peratic), his story of war in heaven, i. 69;
meaning of name of, i. 146 _n._ 1;
founder of Ophite heresy, _ib._;
and with Akembes of Peratæ, i. 149
Eusebius, quoted, i. 7, 14 _n._ 1; ii. 96 _n._ 2, 111 _n._ 2, 112
_n._ 6, 132 _n._ 3
Fabricius, edits Book I of _Philosophumena_, i. 1
Faye, Eugène de, his _Introduction_, etc., and _Gnostiques et
Gnosticisme_ quoted, i. 8 _n._ 3
Fessler, Prof., attributes _Philosophumena_ to Caius, i. 6
Firmicus, J. Maternus, his _Matheseos_ quoted, i. 68 _n._ 1
Flora. _See_ Ptolemy, follower of V.
Flügel, Prof., his _Mani_ quoted, ii. 132 _n._ 3
Fuscianus, prefect of city (188-193 A.D.), sentences Callistus to
mines, ii. 127
Ganschinietz, Richard, his _Hippolytus’ Kapitel gegen die Magier_
quoted, i. 92 _n._ 2
Geryon, the triple-bodied, pervades everything, _ap._ Naassenes, i. 131
Gnostics, Mysteries of, i. 32, 33;
derive tenets from Greeks and barbarians, i. 119.
_See_ Naassenes, Philo
Graillot, L., his _Le Culte de Cybèle_ quoted, i. 135 _n._ 1
Greeks, Phœnician origin of, attributed to Herodotus, i. 111;
tenets of Physicists among, taken from Sextus Empiricus, ii. 150-153
Gronovius, annotates Book I of _Philosophumena_, i. 1
Hatch, Edwin, Dr., his _Hibbert Lectures_ quoted, i. 38 _n._ 1, 123
_n._ 4, 136 _n._ 9; ii. 45 _n._ 6, 52 _n._ 8, 62 _n._ 7.
Hebrew words used by magicians, i. 92, 93.
Hecate, hymn to, i. 100, 101;
identified with Baubo, Gorgo, Mormo and Mene, i. 101;
also with Artemis, Persephone and Eriskigal, _ib._ _n._ 1
Hemerobaptists, i. 18; ii. 132 _n._ 3.
_See_ Mughtasila
Heracleon, follower of Valentinus, his tenets not described by
Hippolytus, ii. 38 _n._ 2
Heraclides of Pontus, i. 19; ii. 152
Heraclitus of Ephesus, i. 10, 16, 17;
his teaching, i. 41; ii. 119.
_See_ Noetus
Hermes, street statues of, i. 127
Hermogenes, i. 16;
his tenets, ii. 111-112;
summary of doctrines of, ii. 169
Hesiod (the poet), his _Theogony_ quoted, i. 62, 63
Hippasus, i. 19; ii. 151
Hippo, his teaching, i. 50, 51
Hippocrates, quoted, i. 126
Hippolytus, schismatic Pope (218-235 A.D.), i. 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11,
16;
denies Pauline authorship of _Hebrews_, i. 23 _n._ 1;
calls himself guardian of the Church, i. 34;
heterodoxy of, ii. 125 _n._ 3, 129 _n._ 4;
_Chronicon_ of, ii. 171;
his own doctrine stated, ii. 172 to end;
his _Substance of the All_, ii. 173
Homoousios, first used by Hippolytus, ii. 69 _n._ 1
Hyacinthus. _See_ Marcia
Irenæus, St., Hippolytus’ indebtedness to, i. 11, 12, 13;
his _Five Books Against Heresies_ quoted, i. 122 _n._ 3, 139 _n._ 5,
160 _n._ 1; ii. 15 _n._ 2, 17 _n._ 4, 25 _n._ 6, 27 _n._ 2, 38
_n._ 2, 39 _nn._ 3, 4; 40 _n._ 2, 44 _n._ 2, 45 _n._ 5, 48 _n._
1, 49 _nn._ 2, 3, 6; 50 _n._ 2, 51 _nn._ 2, 8; 53 _n._ 3, 54 _n._
1, 56 _n._ 2, 57 _nn._ 4, 5; 59 _n._ 1, 76 _n._ 1, 79 _n._ 2, 80
_n._ 2, 90 _n._ 4, 91 _n._ 5, 92 _nn._ 3, 4; 93 _nn._ 4, 5; 111
_nn._ 2, 3.
_See_ Jesus
Isidore. _See_ Basilides
Isis identified with the Earth, i. 105 _n._ 4;
Mysteries of, i. 126
Jacobi, Prof., first to declare Hippolytus author of _Philosophumena_,
i. 5
Jaldabaoth, a fiery god, i. 128, 132 _n._ 3; ii. 102 _n._ 9;
a “fourth number,” _ib._
_See_ Adam, Sophia
James, the brother of the Lord, alleged transmitter of Naassene
doctrines, i. 121; ii. 153
Jerusalem, the heavenly, mother of all living, i. 130;
the city in Phœnicia, i. 138
Jesus, His triple nature, _ap._ Naassenes, i. 121;
the Perfect Man, i. 134;
reason of His Incarnation, i. 145;
His triple powers, _ap._ Peratæ, i. 147;
Intermediate between the Father and matter, i. 158;
Son of Joseph and Mary, _ap._ Justinus and Carpocrates, i. 178; ii.
96;
the great High Priest, ii. 29;
mystic name of, _ap._ Irenæus, ii. 47;
self-generated, _ap._ Marcus, ii. 52;
His Illumination Mission and Passion, _ap._ Basilides, ii. 78, 79;
the One God of Zephyrinus, ii. 123;
so of Callistus, ii. 129.
_See_ Carpocrates, Cerinthus, Ebionites, Docetae, Justinus
Jeû of Bruce Papyrus, called the Great Man, i. 122 _n._ 4
Jews, history of, from Josephus and others, ii. 138-148;
divided into Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes, ii. 139;
tenets of Essenes, ii. 139-145;
the like of Pharisees, ii. 145;
the like of Sadducees, ii. 145-147;
all expect Messiah, ii. 147;
chronology of history of, ii. 170-172
Josephus, i. 10 _n._ 3; i. 17.
_See_ Jews
Jothor, father-in-law of Moses, i. 131
Justin Martyr, says Simon Magus claimed divinity, i. 14
Justinus, the Gnostic, i. 3;
perhaps not Ophite, i. 28 _n._ 2;
his tenets, i. 169-180;
probably one of the later Gnostics, i. 169 _n._ 4;
his oath of secrecy, i. 171, 179;
his _Baruch_ quoted, i. 171;
allegorizes Herodotus’ Scythian story, i. 172;
his Triad of the Good One, Elohim and Edem, i. 172, 173;
the twenty-four angels of, and their names, i. 173;
likeness of these to Bar Khôni’s Ophites, _ib._ _nn._ 3, 4;
angels of, called Trees, i. 174;
creation of protoplasts, i. 174;
ascent of Elohim, i. 175, 176;
sin of Eve and Naas, i. 176;
origin of evil, i. 177;
Heracles a Saviour, _ib._;
Jesus called by Baruch when twelve years old, i. 178;
explanation of Pagan myths, i. 179;
summary of doctrines of, ii. 161, 162;
put by summarizer after Basilides, i. 161 _n._ 2
Kessler, Konrad, his _Mani_ quoted, i. 82 _n._ 2
King, C. W., his _Gnostics and their Remains_ quoted, ii. 17 _n._ 2
Lane, E. W., his _Modern Egyptians_ quoted, i. 97 _n._ 2
Langdon, Dr. Stephen, his _Tammuz and Ishtar_ quoted, i. 105 _n._ 3
Latinisms in text of _Philosophumena_, i. 23
Leemans, Prof. C., his _Papyri Græci_ quoted, ii. 44 _n._ 4
Legge, F., his _Forerunners and Rivals of Christianity_ quoted, i. 2
_n._ 2, 9 _n._ 1, 27 _n._ 1, 39 _n._ 1, 40 _n._ 1, 94 _n._ 1, 105
_nn._ 3, 4; 109 _n._ 2, 114 _n._ 2, 122 _n._ 1, 123 _nn._ 1, 2, 3;
128 _n._ 2, 130 _n._ 1, 135 _n._ 4, 137 _n._ 2, 139 _n._ 5, 155
_nn._ 2, 3; 156 n. 4, 160 _n._ 1, 162 _n._ 2, 165 _n._ 2, 169
_n._ 5, 173 _n._ 4, 174 _n._ 2, 175 _n._ 2; ii. 7 _nn._ 1, 3; 25
_n._ 3, 34 _n._ 5, 72 _n._ 3, 82 _n._ 3, 88 _n._ 3, 89 _n._ 2, 95
_n._ 4, 97 _n._ 1, 103 _n._ 6, 163 _n._ 7
Leucippus, his teaching, i. 48
Lipsius, R. A., opposes Hippolytus’ authorship, i. 6;
his articles in _D.C.B._ quoted, ii. 38 _nn._ 1, 2
Lucian of Samosata, his _Alexander_ quoted, i. 92 _n._ 2, 99 n. 4;
follower of Cerdo, ii. 96
Macmahon, J. H., translates _Philosophumena_, i. 5
Magic, its connection with astrology, i. 91 _n._ 4;
practised by Simon’s disciples, ii. 16;
and Carpocratians, ii. 91
Magicians, tricks of, described, i. 92-103
Man, Perfect, _ap._ Naassenes, i. 123, 134, 138;
in _Pistis Sophia_, i. 123 _n._ 3;
_ap._ Sethiani, i. 165;
First, _ap._ Manichæans, i. 27, 123 _n._ 2;
expression used in Summary, ii. 163.
_See_ Adam, Adamas, Monoimus, Pindar
Manichæism, the Atlas or Omophorus of, i. 110 _n._ 2;
First Man of, captured by powers of darkness, i. 123 _n._ 2; ii. 7
_n._ 3;
hostility of, to Jews, i. 165 _n._ 3;
Justinus’s anticipation of, i. 169 _n._ 4, 176 _n._ 5;
Valentinus’s, ii. 17 _n._ 5;
evocation of First Man in, ii. 34 _n._ 5;
our earth worst of all worlds, ii. 35 _n._ 3;
column of praises in, ii. 50 _n._ 5;
secrecy of, ii. 59 _n._ 1.
_See_ Cumont, Flügel, Kessler
Marcia, concubine of Commodus, ii. 127;
takes counsel with Pope Victor, _ib._;
her foster brother Hyacinthus, _ib._
Marcion, i. 10, 16, 17;
his tenets, ii. 82-90;
compared with those of Empedocles, ii. 82-88;
Prepon’s address to Bardesanes, ii. 89;
summary of doctrines of, ii. 165
Marcus, follower of Valentinus, i. 12;
his tenets, ii. 40-57;
his frauds and juggling tricks, ii. 41-43;
vision of the Tetrad, ii. 45-48;
his cabalistic system of numbers, ii. 48-56
Mariam, aunt of Moses, i. 131
Mariamne, said to have received Naassene tradition from St. James,
i. 121; ii. 153;
known to Origen and Celsus, i. 121 _n._ 5
Mark, St., story of self-mutilation to avoid orders, ii. 87
Maspero, Sir Gaston Charles, his _Hist. anc^{me} de l’Orient_ quoted,
i. 47 _n._ 1
Matter, Jacques, _Hist. du Gnosticisme_ quoted, ii. 59 _n._ 1
Maximilla. _See_ Phrygians
Melchizidek. _See_ Theodotus the Banker
Menander, successor of Simon Magus, i. 17; ii. 59 _n._ 1
Metoposcopy, divination by physiognomy, i. 87-92
Michael, scribe of MS., i. 4
Miller, Bénigne Emanuel, first editor of _Philosophumena_, i. 4, 5;
his _Mélanges de Litt. Grecque_ quoted, i. 100, _n._ 5
Monarchia, doctrine of one supreme source of all things, ii. 123
Monoimus Arabs, i. 17;
his tenets, ii. 106-111;
not Christian, ii. 106 _n._ 1;
his heavenly man, ii. 107, 163;
cabalistic theory of numbers, ii. 109;
letter to Theophrastus quoted, ii. 110;
summary of doctrines of, 163, 164
Montanus. _See_ Phrygians.
Mughtasila, washers or Hemerobaptists, Elchesaites derived from, ii.
132 _n._ 3;
make converts among Essenes and Ebionites, _ib._
Mynas, Mynoïdes, discoverer of MS. of _Philosophumena_, i. 2, 3, 5
Mysteries of the heretics, i. 23, 33, 125, 180;
promise to describe, i. 63;
probably described in missing Books, i. 65;
source of Naassene heresy, i. 121;
M. of Assyrians, i. 123;
of Phrygians, i. 126, 133, 135-138, 140;
ineffable M. of Isis, i. 126;
M. of Greeks, i. 127;
_Hye Cye_ in Eleusinian, i. 129;
M. of Samothrace, i. 132;
great secret of Eleusinian, i. 138;
Lesser and Great, i. 139;
M. of the Great Mother, i. 141, 142;
Phliasian, older than Eleusinian, i. 166;
M. of Justinus, i. 171
Naas, the serpent, i. 120, 142;
one of Justinus’ maternal angels, i. 173
Naassenes, i. 3;
their tenets, i. 118-146;
call themselves Gnostics, i. 120, 142;
their supreme deity Adamas, i. 120;
all his powers in Jesus, i. 121;
the names of the Three Churches, _ib._;
the first man, i. 122;
their connection with the Mysteries, i. 123;
with the _Gospel of the Egyptians_, _ib._;
the myth of Attis, i. 124;
their interpretation of the mysteries of Isis, i. 126, 127;
the demiurge Jaldabaoth, i. 128;
their interpretation of Homer, i. 130;
of the Cabiric mysteries, i. 132;
the myths of Corybas and Pappas, i. 133-135;
other names of Attis, i. 135-140;
N. mentioned by Irenæus, i. 139 _n._ 5;
why so called, i. 142;
hymns of, i. 142, 144, 145;
interpretation of anatomy of brain, i. 143, 144;
summary of doctrines of, ii. 153.
_See_ Adamas, Eleusis, Geryon, Serpent
Neologisms used by Hippolytus, i. 24
Noetus, i. 3, 13, 15, 17;
his tenets, ii. 118-123;
his heresy, derived
from Heraclitus, ii. 118-123;
his followers, ii. 118;
identifies Father and Son, ii. 123;
summary of doctrines of, ii. 168, 169.
_See_ Cleomenes, Phrygians
Novatian, _Philosophumena_ attributed to, i. 6;
Hippolytus said to follow, i. 7 _n._ 4.
Oannes, the fist man, _ap._ Assyrians, i. 122
Ocellus Lucanus, i. 19; ii. 152
Ophites, i. 16, 17;
heresy derived from worship of Cybele or Great Mother, i. 118 _n._ 1;
curse Christ, _ap._ Origen, i. 121 _n._ 1;
comparative, insignificance of, i. 20 _n._ 1; ii. 116.
_See_ Attis, Euphrates, Naassenes
Origen, _Philosophumena_ attributed
to, i. 5, 6;
_Contra Celsum_ quoted, i, 20 _n._ 1, 121 _nn._ 1, 5; 130 _n._ 1; 146
_n._ 1
Orpheus, a theologist, i. 103 _n._ 4;
discloser of mysteries, i. 166;
his _Bacchica_ quoted, but otherwise unknown, _ib._;
Sethian heresy derived from, _ib._
Osiris, his mutilation, i. 126;
signifies water, i. 105 _n._ 4;
his statue in the temple of Isis, i. 127
Papas, god of Phrygians, i. 135;
name of Attis, _ib._ _n._ 1;
means Father, _ib._
Parmenides, his teaching, i. 47, 48
Parthey, Gustav, his _Zwei griechische Zauberpapyri_ quoted, i. 93
_n._ 5
Patripassianism, heresy of, ii. 118 _n._ 1, 168 _n._ 1
Paul, St., _Acts of, and Thekla_, quoted, i. 30 _n._ 1
Peratæ, i. 3;
mentioned by Clem, Alex., i. 146 _n._ 1;
their teaching, i. 146-159;
their triple division of the cosmos, i. 146; ii. 154;
their Christology, i. 147;
their astrological theories, i. 148, 149;
their book _Proastii_ quoted, i. 50-153;
why called Peratæ, i. 154;
their saviour Serpent, i. 155;
Serpent is type of Christ, Joseph and Nimrod, i. 155, 156;
the constellation Draco, i. 157;
anatomy of brain typifies Father and Son, i. 159;
summary of doctrines of, ii. 154, 155.
_See_ Edem, Euphrates
Persephone, as lover of Adonis, i. 124.
_See_ Hecate
Persians say God is Light, i. 104
Pharisees. _See_ Jews
Philo, his Logos and Gnostic ideas, ii. 7 _n._ 3, 8 _n._ 2, 173
_n._ 4
Philumena. _See_ Apelles
Photius, his _Bibliotheca_ quoted, i. 12, 13 _n._ 1.
Phrên. _See_ Râ
Phrygians (Montanists), their tenets, ii. 113, 114;
followers of Montanus, Priscilla and Maximilla, ii. 113;
lean towards Noetian and Patripassian heresies, ii. 114;
summary of doctrines of, ii. 167, 168.
_See_ Mysteries, Naassenes
Pindar, ode on first man assigned to, i. 122
_Pistis Sophia_, The, quoted, i. 3 n. 1, 9 _n._ 1, 123 _nn._ 1, 3, 124
_n._ 11, 150 _nn._ 1, 3, 152 _n._ 2, 155 _n._ 1, 162 _n._ 2, 173
_n._ 1, 177 _n._ 5; ii. 5 _n._ 4, 16 _n._ 4, 43 _n._ 2, 45 _n._ 4,
48 _n._ 3, 52 _n._ 9, 53 _n._ 2, 71 _n._ 6, 79 _n._ 3, 93 _n._ 7,
97 _n._ 1, 102 _n._ 2
Plato, i. 16;
his teaching, i, 51-55;
passages from Aristotle ascribed by Hippolytus to, i. 53, 54;
his _Clitopho_ quoted as _Republic_, i. 55 _n._ 7;
analogy between his teaching and Simon M.’s, ii. 5;
and Valentinus’, ii. 18, 19, 25;
quoted, ii. 23, 36, 37.
_See_ Alcinous
Plutarch, his _de Iside et Osiride_ quoted, i. 129 _n._ 3;
_de Exilio_, ii, 23 _n._ 1
Point, indivisible, from which all things spring, i. 115, 141; ii. 9
Pontianus, Pope (230-235 A.D.), i. 7
Praxeas, a heretic refuted by Tertullian and mentioned by pseudo-Tert.,
but not by Irenæus or Hippolytus, i. 13
Prepon the Assyrian. _See_ Marcion
Priscilla. _See_ Phrygians
Proastii. _See_ Peratæ
Proteus, identified with Attis, i. 137
Prudentius quoted, i. 7
Ptolemy, Claudius, the astronomer, mentioned, i. 82;
his _Tetrabiblos_ quoted, i. 88 _n._ 2
---- follower of Valentinus, his tenets, ii. 39, 40;
his letter to his “fair sister Flora,” ii. 39 _n._ 7
Pyrrho, wrongly called an Academic by Hippolytus, i. 32;
his teaching, i. 59
Pythagoras, i. 15, 16, 17;
his life and followers, i. 36-39;
his theory of numbers, i. 37, 115 _n._ 6, 116; ii. 20;
Accidents attributed to, ii. 21;
his theory of metempsychosis, ii. 23;
gnomic sayings of, ii. 23, 24;
solar theory of, ii. 24
Quartodecimans, i. 17;
their tenets, ii. 112, 113;
Irenæus their advocate, ii. 112 _n._ 6
Râ, Egyptian Sun-God, invoked by magicians, i. 92 _n._ 7
Rhea, an androgyne deity, i. 125;
identified with Gê and Cybele, _ib._ _n._ 1
Rogers, Dr. R. W., _Religion of Babylonia and Assyria_ quoted, i. 151
_n._ 2
Sabellius. _See_ Callistus
Sadducees. _See_ Jews
Salmon, Dr. George, his _Cross-references in Philosophumena_ quoted,
i. 8; ii. 38 _n._ 1.;
his articles in _D.C.B._ i. 6 _n._ 1, 7 _n._ 4, 22 _n._ 1, 69 _n._
6; ii. 38 _n._ 2, 40 _n._ 3, 80 _n._ 1, 98 _n._ 1, 100 _n._ 1, 105
_n._ 4, 108 _n._ 3, 109 _n._ 6, 113 _n._ 2, 118 _n._ 1, 149 _n._ 2,
173 _n._ 3
Saturnilus, i. 16;
his tenets, ii. 80, 81;
his Unknown Father, ii. 81;
angels make man in His image, _ib._;
Christ sent to depose God of Jews, _ib._
_See_ Simon of Cyrene
Saulasau. _See_ Caulacau.
Schneidewin, F. G., with Duncker edits part of _Philosophumena_, i. 4
Schürer, Prof., his _History of Jewish People_ quoted, ii. 7 _n._ 3, 8
_n._ 2
Secundus, follower of Valentinus, his tenets, ii. 38
Sephora, wife of Moses, i. 131
Serpent, inspirer of Naassene doctrine, i. 120, 142;
identified with substance of water, i. 142;
the constellation Draco, i. 146 _n._ 1;
the brazen, _ap._ Peratæ, i. 155, 156;
the Son and the Word, i. 157;
wind of darkness _ap._ Sethiani, i. 164, 165;
of Justinus wholly evil, i. 169 _n._ 5
_Seth, Paraphrase of._ _See_ Sethiani.
Sethiani, their tenets, i. 160-169;
authors who mention, i. 160 _n._ 1;
the Sitheus of Bruce Papyrus, _ib._;
their triad of Light, Darkness and Spirit, i. 161;
Light and Spirit caught by Darkness, i. 162;
impregnation of Darkness, i. 163;
analogy with other triads, i. 165, 166;
system of, derived from Orphic, i. 166;
Phliasian Mysteries of Great Mother, _ib._;
simile of oil-well at Ampe, i. 168, 169;
their _Paraphrase of Seth_, i. 169;
summary of doctrines of, ii. 155-157.
_See_ Andronicus, Man
Sextus Empiricus, Hippolytus’ borrowings from, i. 10, 69 _n._ 1; ii.
150.
_See_ Greek
Simon of Cyrene, story of his substitution for Jesus on the Cross
probably Saturnilian, not Basilidian, ii. 59 _n._ 1, 79 _n._ 2
Simon Magus, i. 3, 13, 14;
his system derived from art of arithmetic, i. 115, 116;
his six roots, i. 116; ii. 7;
his _Great Announcement_ quoted, i. 115, 140, 141; ii. 4-14;
his life and tenets, ii. 2-17;
his supreme God, fire, ii. 4;
his account of the creation of Man, ii. 9;
his Epinoia Helen of Tyre, ii. 15;
his death, ii. 17;
source of Valentinian heresy, ii. 17, 40 _n._ 3;
summary of doctrines of, 157, 158.
_See_ Edem, Justin, Magic, Menander
Socrates, i. 16;
his teaching, i. 51
Sophia, name given to Helen of Tyre by Simon M., i. 13 _n._ 3;
Sethians make her cause of Flood, _ib._;
identified with Earth, i. 105 _n._ 3; ii. 27 _n._ 4;
mother of Jaldabaoth, _ap._ Naassenes, i. 118 _n._ 1, 132 _n._ 3;
in Naassene hymn, i. 145 _n._ 3;
her name of Achamoth, i. 173 _n._ 4;
fall of, _ap._ Valentinus, ii. 7 _n._ 3, 27;
decides fate of men, ii. 17 _n._ 5;
her adventures, ii. 28-36;
the heaven of, ii. 31 _n._ 1;
identified with Holy Spirit, ii. 33
Sotion of Alexandria, Hippolytus’ borrowings from, i. 49 _n._ 3; 64
_n._ 2
Stähelin, Heinrich, his _Die Gnostischen Quellen Hippolyts_ quoted,
i. 8 _n._ 2
Stoics, their teaching, i. 57, 58;
Hippolytus’ reluctance to mention, i. 157 _n._ 2
Syrictas, the pipe-player, name of Attis, i. 142
Tatian the Gnostic, i. 17;
his tenets, ii. 111;
holds Adam not saved, _ib._;
summary of doctrines of, ii. 164.
_See_ Encratites
Tertullian, _Philosophumena_ assigned to, i. 6;
quoted, ii. 82 _n._ 3, 96 _nn._ 2, 3, 111 _n._ 3.
_See_ Praxeas
Tertullian, Pseudo-, _Adversus Omnes Hæreses_, i. 11-13;
quoted, i. 160 _n._ 1; ii. 95 _n._ 4, 97 _n._ 2.
_See_ Praxeas
Thales, i. 9, his teaching, i. 35, 36;
quoted, i. 142
Theodore bar Khôni, his _Book of Scholia_ quoted, i. 169 _n._ 4, 173
_n._ 3
Theodoret calls Hippolytus Bishop and Martyr, i. 7, 11, 12;
his account of Peratæ, i. 146 _n._ 1;
quotes summary and not text of _Philosophumena_, ii. 154 _n._ 1
Theodotus the Banker, his tenets, ii. 94, 95;
holds Melchizidek greater than Christ, ii. 94;
summary of doctrines of, ii. 167
Theodotus of Byzantium, his tenets, ii. 93, 94;
adoptionist views of, ii. 94;
summary of doctrines of, ii. 167
Theophrastus. _See_ Monoimus
Thomas, Gospel according to, quoted, i. 126
Urbanus, Pope (223-230 A.D.), i. 7
Valentinus, his system derived from arithmetical art, i. 15;
from Pythagoras and Plato, ii. 17-19;
Zoroastrian and Egyptian features of, ii. 17 _n._ 1;
division of followers as to Supreme Being, ii. 25;
his system of Aeons, ii. 26, 27;
Sophia and her Ectroma, ii. 28;
projection of Horos, ii. 29;
Jesus the Common Friend of the Pleroma, _ib._;
salvation of Ectroma and result of her passions, ii. 30;
fourfold division of world, ii. 31, and of man, ii. 32;
analogies of myths of, with Manichæism, ii. 34 _n._ 5, 35 _n._ 3;
Anatolic and Italiote schools of, ii. 34;
purpose of Incarnation, _ap._ ii. 35;
summary of doctrines of, ii. 158, 159.
_See_ Beelzebuth, Demiurge, Devil, Pleroma and Sophia
Victor, Pope (189-202 A.D.). _See_ Callistus
Wessely, his _Griechische Zauberpapyri_ quoted, i. 93 _n._ 5
Wilson, James, his _Complete Dictionary of Astrology_ quoted, i. 67
_n._ 1
Wordsworth, Bishop Christopher, his _Hippolytus and the Church of
Rome_ quoted, i. 4 _n._ 2; i. 6; i. 12 _n._ 1; ii. 119 _n._ 2,
129 _n._ 5
Xenophanes, his teaching, i. 49, 50
Zaratas (Zoroaster) quoted, i. 9, 104 _n._ 3; ii. 20;
Amshaspands
of, and Simon Magus’ roots, ii. 2 _n._ 2;
the like and Aeons of Valentinus, ii. 17 _n._ 5
Zealots, said by Hippolytus to be a sect of Essenes, ii. 143, 144 _n._
1
Zeesar. _See_ Caulacau
Zephyrinus, Pope (202-218 A.D.), i. 3;
said by Hippolytus to be ignorant and unskilled, ii. 118, 124;
leans towards heresy, ii. 118
THE END
Transcriber’s Notes
The notes in the left and right margins, indicating page numbers in the
original Greek, have been converted to e.g. [Sidenote: p. 216] in this
version. Obvious typographical errors and variable spelling were
corrected. The following corrections have been made to the text:
Page Original New
-------------------------------------------
7 takeing taking
13 ἀ πέραντον ἀπέραντον
26 ό ὁ
27 Σύγκοασις Σύγκρασις
27 κὰι καὶ
33 λελαλημέαν λελαλημένα
43 αεὶ ἀεὶ
44 Papypi Papyri
55 ᾶνω ἄνω
57 ףל־ארבע קל־ארבע
62 εἰδεσιν εἴδεσιν
80 des der
80 firstfruits first-fruits
87 κολοδάκτυλος κολοβοδάκτυλος
91 χωρησάσαν χωρήσασαν
98 φυσικὴς φυσικῆς
99 εῖναι εἶναι
114 ράφανοφαγίας ῥάφανοφαγίας
114 ἐγκρατε͂ις ἐγκρατεῖς
119 φιλοσοφυμένοις φιλοσοφουμένοις
119 Φιλοσοφυμένους Φιλοσοφουμένους
139 εἰδη εἴδη
145 κυριόις κυρίοις
150 ἀκαλώπιστος ἀκαλλώπιστος
164 octohedrons octahedrons
178 phase phrase
181 Manichéisine Manichéisme
183 Theogomy Theogony
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