52. But concerning His fashioning[260] (Marcus) speaks thus: Powers which emanated from the Second Tetrad 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 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, 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]
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] 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 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 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 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]
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
[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.
[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.
[3] ὄργια, “secret rites” and ὀργή, “wrath,” is the pun here.
[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.
[5] τοῦ Γιττηνοῦ. Hippolytus’ usual practice is to use the place-name as an adjective. The Codex has Γειττηνοῦ, Justin Martyr, “of Gitto.”
[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.
[7] Acts viii. 9-14.
[8] i. e. Cyrene.
[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.
[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.
[11] γέννημα γυναικός, “birth of a woman.”
[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.
[13] Deut. iv. 24, “consuming” only in A. V.
[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.
[16] A phrase singularly like this occurs in the “Naassene” author. See Vol. I. pp. 140-141 supra, where the “universals” are enumerated.
[17] Or that which can only be perceived by the mind and that which can be perceived by the senses.
[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.
[19] Here, again, he has inverted the order. The hidden is the intelligible, the manifest, the perceptible.
[20] The simile of the Treasure-house finds frequent expression in the Pistis Sophia.
[21] Dan. iv. 12.
[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.
[23] Isa. v. 7. The A.V. has “the men” for “a man” and “pleasant” for “beloved.”
[24] τοῖς ἐξεικονισμένοις.
[25] 1 Pet. i. 24, 25. The A.V. has “glory of man” for “glory of flesh.”
[26] τέλειον νοερὸν. It is very difficult to find in English a word expressing the difference between this νοερός, “intellectual,” and νοητός, “intelligible.”
[27] Reading ἀπειράκις ἀπείρων (ὄντων) for the ἀπειράκις ἀπείρως of Cruice’s text.
[28] Cruice’s emendation. The Codex has γνώμην ἴσην, “equal opinion”? Schneidewin, νώματος αἶσαν.
[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.
[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.
[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.
[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.”
[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.”
[34] Gen. ii. 2.
[35] The Sethiani also quote this. See supra, Vol. I. p. 165.
[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.
[37] Gen. i. 2, “moved upon the face of,” A.V.
[38] ἔπλασε, “moulded.”
[39] That is, masculo-feminine.
[40] ἐξεικονισθῇ again. Like the Boundless Power or the Logos?
[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.
[42] Jer. i. 5. “Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee,” A.V.
[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.
[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.
[45] The use of the first person shows that this is Hippolytus’ and not Simon’s explanation.
[46] ἀναπνοή, “inbreathing.”
[47] Cruice’s emendation.
[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.
[49] The simile as well as the phrase is to be found in Aristotle. Cf. his Organon, c. viii.
[50] Cf. Isa. ii. 4; Micah iv. 3.
[51] Matt. iii, 10; Luke iii, 9.
[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.
[53] οὐ κοσμεῖται, non ordinaretur, Cr., “is not adorned,” Macmahon.
[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.
[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.
[56] A play τροπή, “turning,” and τροφὴ, “nutriment.”
[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.
[58] Words in brackets Cruice’s emendation.
[59] παραφυάδες.
[60] δύναμις σιγή, a name compounded of two nouns like Pistis Sophia. The practice seems peculiar to this literature.
[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.
[62] So that the Supreme Being is of both sexes.
[63] This is the exact converse of what has just before been said about the Father containing Thought within himself.
[64] καταγινομένη, “descending into” (women’s forms)?
[65] This sentence is taken verbatim from Irenæus, I, 16, 2.
[66] ἐπὶ τέγους, literally, “on the roof.”
[67] διὰ τῆς ἰδίας ἐπιγνώσεως; per suam agnitionem, Cr.; “thro’ his own intelligence,” Macmahon.
[68] Reading ἄρχοντες for the ἀρχαί of the Codex.
[69] This sentence also appears verbatim in Irenæus, I, 16, 1.
[70] i. e. the prophets.
[71] The whole of this from the last quotation to the end of the section is also from Irenæus, I, 16, 2.
[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.
[73] From the beginning of the section to here is from Irenæus, I, 16, 3.
[74] That is, made up this doctrine.
[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.
[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.
[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.
[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.