[150] Cf. Ezekiel x. 12.
[151] ῥῆμα, not λόγος.
[152] Here we see the interpretation put by Hippolytus an the Aristotelian τὰ ὅλα.
[153] θεμελιόω. The whole of this sentence singularly resembles that in the Great Announcement ascribed to Simon Magus, for which see II, p. 12 infra.
[154] This idea of the Indivisible Point, which recurs in several Gnostic writings, including those of Simon and Basilides, seems founded on the mathematical axiom that the line and therefore all solid bodies spring from the point, which itself has “neither parts nor magnitude.”
[155] Ἐπινοίᾳ. This also is used by Simon as the equivalent of Ἔννοια.
[156] Ps. xix. 3.
[157] ἀπρονοήτως, Cr., sine numine quidquam; Macmahon, “without premeditation.”
[158] Performances in the theatres formed part of the Megalesia or Festival of the Great Mother.
[159] I should be inclined to read τῆς Μεγάλης μυστήρια, “Mysteries of the Great Mother.”
[160] An allusion to the variant of the Cybele legend which makes her the emasculator of Attis.
[161] So Conington, who translated the hymns into English verse, and Schneidewin. Hippolytus, however, evidently gave this invocation to the Greeks. See p. 132 supra.
[162] δ’ ὀφίαν, according to Schneidewin’s restoration (for which see p. 176 Cr.), seems better sense, if we can suppose that the Sabazian serpent was so called.
[163] The whole hymn with the next fragment is given as restored to metrical form where quoted in last note.
[164] That is of the Galli, or eunuch-priests of Attis and Cybele.
[165] Thales only said, so far as we know, that water was the beginning of all things.
[166] The cornucopia: horn of the goat (not bull) Amalthea seems to have been intended. I see no likeness between this and the passage in Deut. xxxiii. 17, to which Macmahon refers it.
[167] Gen. ii. 10.
[168] This and the three following quotations are from Gen. ii. 10-14 and follow the Septuagint version.
[169] Play upon Euphrates and εὐφραίνει, “rejoices.”
[170] χαρακτηρίζει. “Stamps” would be more correct, but singularly incongruous with water.
[171] John iv. 10. No substantial difference from A. V.
[172] οὐσίαι, but not in the theological sense.
[173] This simile, repeated often later, has been the chief support of Salmon and Stähelin’s forgery theory. Yet Clement of Alexandria (Book VII, c. 2, Stromateis) also uses it, and the turning of swords into ploughshares and spears into pruning-hooks appears in Micah iv. 3, as well as in Isaiah ii. 4, without arguing a common origin.
[174] John 1. 9.
[175] Isa. xl. 15.
[176] Play upon χριόμενοι, “anointed,” and χριστιανοί.
[177] 1 Sam. x. 1; xvi. 13, 14.
[178] The hymn which follows is so corrupt that Schneidewin declared it beyond hope of restoration. Miller shows that the original metre was anapæstic, the number of feet diminishing regularly from 6 to 4. He likens this to that of the hymns of Synesius and the Tragopodagra of Lucian.
[179] Reading φάος for χάος.
[180] This seems to correspond with the Ophite description of Sophia or the third Person of their Triad in Chaos. Cf. Irenæus, I, 28.
[181] The source of this chapter on the Naassenes is so far undiscoverable. Contrary to his usual practice, Hippolytus here mentions the name of no heretical author as he does in the following chapters of this Book. It is probable, therefore, that he may have taken down his account of “Naassene” doctrines from the lips of some convert, which would account for the extreme wildness of the quotations and to the incoherence with which he jumps about from one subject to another. This would also account for the heresy here described being far more Christian in tone than the other forms of Ophitism which follow it in the text, and the quotations from Scripture, especially the N.T., being more numerous and on the whole more apposite than in the succeeding chapters. The style, such as it is, is maintained throughout and its continuity should perhaps forbid us to see in it a plurality of authors. Little prominence in it is given to the Serpent which gives its name to the sect, although it is here said that he is good, and this seems to point to the Naassene being more familiar with the Western than with the Eastern forms of Cybele-worship.
[182] No mention of this sect is made by Irenæus or Epiphanius, and Theodoret’s statements concerning it correspond so closely with those of our text as to make it certain either that they were drawn from it or that both he and Hippolytus drew from a common source. Yet Clement of Alexandria knew of the Peratics (see Stromateis VII, 16), and Origen (cont. Cels. VI, 28) speaks of the Ophites generally as boasting Euphrates as their founder. The name given to them in our text is said by Clement (ubi cit.) to be a place-name, and the better opinion seems to be that it means “Mede” or one who lives on the further side of the Euphrates. The main point of their doctrine seems to be the great prominence given in it to the Serpent, whom they call the Son, and make an intermediate power between the Father of All and Matter. In this they are perhaps following the lead of some of the Græco-Oriental worships like that of Sabazius, one of the many forms of Attis, or that of Dionysos whose symbol was the serpent. The proof of their doctrines, however, they sought for not, like the Naassenes, in the mystic rites, but in a kind of astral theology which looked for religious truths in the grouping of the stars; and it was in pursuit of this that they identified the Saviour Serpent with the constellation Draco. Yet they were ostensibly Christians, being apparently perfectly willing to accept the historical Christ as their great intermediary. Their attitude to Judaism is more difficult to grasp because, while they quoted freely from the Old Testament, they apparently considered its God as an evil, or at all events, an unnecessarily harsh, power, in which they anticipated Manes and probably Marcion. Had we more of their writings we should probably find in them the embodiment of a good deal of early Babylonian tradition, to which most of these astrological heresies paid great attention.
[183] πηγή.
[184] τὸ μὲν ἓν μέρος. Cruice thinks these words should be added here instead of in the description of the “great source” just above. See Book X, II, p. 481 infra.
[185] Probably “Great Father.”
[186] This is entirely contradictory of Hippolytus’ own statement later of their doctrine that the universe consists of Father, Son, and Matter. Αὐτογενής, for which αὐτογέννητος is substituted a page later, is the last epithet to be applied to a son. Is it a mistake for μονογέννητος, “only begotten?” For the three worlds, see the Naassene author also, p. 121 supra.
[187] The cause assigned a little later is the salvation of the three worlds.
[188] τριδύναμος probably means with powers from all three worlds. The phrase is frequent in the Pistis Sophia.
[189] συγκρίματα, concretiones, Cr. and Macmahon. It might mean “decrees” and is used in the Septuagint version of Daniel for “interpretations” of dreams.
[190] Coloss. i. 19, and ii. 9.
[191] From the starry influences?
[192] John iii. 17.
[193] 1. Cor. xi. 32.
[194] But see n. 4 on last page and text three sentences earlier.
[195] It was not the world, but the Zodiac that the astrologers divided into dodecatemories. See Bouché-Leclercq, L’Astrologie Gr., passim.
[196] There must be some mistake here. The planetary world, according to the astronomy of the time, only began at the Moon.
[197] The words which follow, down to the end of this paragraph, with the exception of one sentence, are taken, not from the astrologers, but from the opponent Sextus Empiricus. They correspond to pp. 339 ff. of the Leipzig edition of Sextus and the restorations from this are shown by round brackets. The whole passage doubtless once formed the beginning of Book IV of our text, the opening words of which they repeat. For the probable cause of this needless repetition see the Introduction, p. 20 supra.
[198] Sextus’ comment, not Hippolytus’.
[199] The personal followers of Pythagoras were called Pythagorics, those who later gave a general assent to his doctrines Pythagoreans.
[200] An echo of a tradition which seems widespread in Asia. In the Pistis Sophia it is said that half the signs of the Zodiac rebelled against the order to give up “the purity of their light” and joined the wicked Adamas, while the other half remained faithful under the rule of Jabraoth. Cf. Rev. xii. 7, and the Babylonian legend of the assault of the seven evil spirits on the Moon.
[201] “Toparch” = ruler of a place. Proastius, “suburban,” or a dweller in the environs of a town. It here probably means the ruler of a part of the heavens near or under the influence of a planet.
[202] The bombastic phrases which follow seem to have been much corrupted and to have been translated from some language other than Greek. Νυκτόχροος and ὑδατόχροος are not, I think, met with elsewhere, and the genders are much confused throughout the whole quotation, Poseidon being made a female deity and Isis a male one. The more outlandish names have some likeness to the “Munichuaphor,” “Chremaor,” etc., of the Pistis Sophia. There seems some logical connection between the name of the powers and those born under them, the lovers being assigned to Eros, and so on.
[203] Cruice points out that “eyes” are here probably written for “wells,” the Hebrew for both being the same, and refers us to the twelve wells of Elim in Exod. xv. 27.
[204] Schneidewin here quotes from Berossos the well-known passage about the woman Omoroca, Thalatth, or Thalassa, who presided over the chaos of waters and its monstrous inhabitants. See Cory’s Ancient Fragments, p. 25. The name has been generally taken to cover that of Tiamat whom Bel-Merodach defeated. See Rogers, Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, p. 107.
[205] All Titans, like Kronos himself.
[206] Macmahon reads here Ino, but this name appears later.
[207] There is some confusion here. The Platonists, following Philolaos, attributed singular properties to the twelve-angled figure made out of pentagons and declared it to have been the model after which the Zodiac was made.
[208] νυκτόχροος. It seems to be a translation of the Latin nocticolor.
[209] So the Codex. Schneidewin and Cruice would read Κρόνος, but that name has already occurred.
[210] Here again Schneidewin would read ἀστέρος, “star”; but the next sentence makes it plain that it is the wind which is meant.
[211] Ariel is in one of the later documents of the Pistis Sophia made one of the torturers in hell.
[212] Probably Saclan or Asaqlan whom the Manichæans made the Son of the King of Darkness and the husband of the Nebrod or Nebroe mentioned above.
[213] πρωτοκαμάρον. Macmahon translates it the “star Protocamarus,” for which I can see no authority. It seems to me to be an inversion of πρωτομακάρος, “first-best,” very likely to happen in turning a Semitic language into Greek and back again.
[214] The dogstar, Sothis, or Sirius, was identified with Isis.
[215] Μύγδων. In a magic spell, Pluto, who has many analogies with Attis, is saluted as “Huesemigadon,” perhaps “Hye, Cye, Mygdon.” Has this Mygdon any analogy with amygdalon the almond?
[216] Qy. Mise, the hermaphrodite Dionysos?
[217] Βουμέγας, “great ox”? All the other names which follow are those of magicians or diviners.
[218] Two of the seven “angels of the presence.” Their appearance in a list mainly of Greek heroes is inexplicable.
[219] τῆς ἄνω. Perhaps we should insert δυνάμεως, “the Power on High.”
[220] See Sibyll. Orac., III. But the Sibyl says the exact opposite. Cf. Charles, Apocrypha and Psuedepigrapha of the O.T., II, 377.
[221] περᾶσαι. The derivation is too much even for Theodoret, who says that the name of the sect is taken from “Euphrates the Peratic” (or Mede).
[222] So modern astrologers make him the “greater malefic.”
[223] A fragment from Heraclitus according to Schleiermacher.
[224] So the Pistis Sophia speaks repeatedly of “the Pleroma of all Pleromas.”
[225] Many magical books bore the name of Moses. See Forerunners, II, 46, and n.
[226] Is this why one Ophite sect was called the Cainites? The hostility here shown to the God of the Jews is common to many other sects such as that of Saturninus, of Marcion and later of Manes. Cf. Forerunners, II, under these names.
[227] Gen. x. 9. Nimrod, who is sometimes identified with the hero Gilgames, plays a large part in all this Eastern tradition.
[228] John iii. 13, 14.
[229] Ibid., i. 1-4.
[230] For this identification of Eve with the Mother of Life or Great Goddess of Asia, see Forerunners, II, 300, and n.
[231] ἄκραν. Cruice and Macmahon both read ἀρχή, “beginning,” but see ταύτην τὴν ἄκραν later.
[232] All this is, of course, quite different to the meaning assigned to these stars by the unnamed heretics of Book IV.
[233] If we could be sure that Hippolytus was here summarizing fairly Ophite doctrines, it would appear that the Ophites rejected the Platonic theory that matter was essentially evil. What is here said presents a curious likeness to Stoic doctrines of the universe, as of man’s being. Hippolytus, however, never quotes a Stoic author and seems throughout to ignore Stoicism save in Book I.
[234] πρόσωπον. The word used to denote the “character” or part or a person on the stage.
[235] ἰδέαι. So throughout this passage.
[236] Gen. xxx. 37 ff.
[237] χαρακτῆρες. See n. on p. 143 supra.
[238] Not “ring-straked” like Jacob’s sheep.
[239] ὁμοούσιος.
[240] Matt. vii. 11. Note the change of “Your” for “Our.”
[241] John viii. 44.
[242] Here again he dwells upon the supposed evil nature of the Demiurge.
[243] Or as Macmahon translates, “the substantial from the Unsubstantial one.”
[244] A lacuna in the text is thus filled by Cruice.
[245] Again this simile is not necessarily by the Peratic author, but seems to be introduced by Hippolytus. For the supposed conduct of naphtha in the presence of fire, see Plutarch, vit Alex.
[246] ἐξεικονισμένον. A different metaphor from the “type.” We shall meet with this one frequently in the work attributed to Simon Magus.
[247] The text has ἐκ καμαρίου. Here Schneidewin agrees that the proper reading is μακαρίου, there being no reason why any “life-giving substance” should exist in the brain-pan. He thus confirms the reading in n. on p. 152 supra.
[248] This chapter on the Peratæ is evidently drawn from more sources than one. The author’s first statement of their doctrines, which occupies pp. 146-149 supra, represents probably his first impression of them and contains at least one glaring contradiction, duly noted in its place. Then comes a long extract from Sextus Empiricus which is to all appearance a repetition of the earliest part of Book IV, only pardonable if it be allowed that the present Book was delivered in lecture form. There follows a quotation longer and more sustained than any other in the whole work from a Peratic book which he says was called Proastii, with a bombastic prelude much resembling the language of Simon Magus’ Great Announcement in Book VI, followed by a catalogue of starry “influences” which reads much as if it were taken from some astrological manual. There follows in its turn a dissertation on the Ophite Serpent showing how this object of their adoration, identified with the Brazen Serpent of Exodus, was made to prefigure or typify in the most incongruous manner many personages in the Old and New Testaments, including Christ Himself. After this he announces an “epitome” of the Peratic doctrine which turns out to be perfectly different from anything before said, divides the universe, which he has previously said the Peratics divided into unbegotten, self-begotten and begotten, into a new triad of Father, Son (i. e. Serpent), and Matter, and gives a fairly consistent statement of the Peratic scheme of salvation based on this hypothesis. One can only suppose here that this last is an afterthought added when revising the book and inspired by some fresh evidence of Peratic beliefs probably coloured by Stoic or Marcionite doctrine. In those parts of the chapter which appear to have been taken from genuinely Peratic sources, the reference to some Western Asiatic tradition concerning cosmogony and the protoplasts and differing considerably from the narrative of Genesis, is plainly apparent.
[249] This chapter is the most difficult of the whole book to account for, with the doubtful exception of the much later one on the Docetæ. A sect of Sethians is mentioned by Irenæus, who does not attempt to separate their doctrines from those of the Ophites. Pseudo-Tertullian in his tractate Against All Heresies also connects with the Ophites a sect called Sethites or Sethoites, the main dogma he attributes to them being an attempt to identify Christ with the Seth of Genesis. Epiphanius follows this last author in this identification and calls them Sethians, but does not expressly connect them with the Ophites, makes them an Egyptian sect, and does not attribute to them serpent-worship. The sectaries of this chapter are called in the rubric Sithiani, altered to Sēthiani in the Summary of Book X, and the name is not necessarily connected with that of the Patriarch. In the Bruce Papyrus, a Power, good but subordinate to the Supreme God, is mentioned, called “the Sitheus,” which may possibly, by analogy with the late-Egyptian Si-Osiris and Si-Ammon, be construed “Son of God.” Of their doctrines little can be made from Hippolytus’ brief but confused description. Their division of the cosmos into three parts does not seem to differ much from that of the Peratæ, although they make a sharper distinction than this last between the world of light and that of darkness, which has led Salmon (D.C.B. s.v., Ophites) to conjecture for them a Zoroastrian origin. This is unlikely, and more attention is due to Hippolytus’ own statement that they derived their doctrines from Musæus, Linus, and Orpheus. In Forerunners it is sought to show that the Orphic teaching was one of the foundations on which the fabric of Gnosticism was reared, and the image of the earth as a matrix was certainly familiar to the Greeks, who made Delphi its ὀμφαλός or navel. Hence the imagery of the text, offensive as it is to our ideas, would not have been so to them, and Epiphanius (Hær., XXXVIII, p. 510, Oehl.) knew of several writings, κατὰ τῆς Ὑστέρας, or the Womb, which he says the sister sect of Cainites called the maker of heaven and earth. In this case, we need not take the story in the text about the generation by the bad or good serpent as necessarily referring to the Incarnation. One of the scenes in the Mysteries of Attis-Sabazius, and perhaps of those of Eleusis also, seems to have shown the seduction by Zeus in serpent-form of his virgin daughter Persephone and the birth therefrom of the Saviour Dionysos who was but his father re-born. This story of the fecundation of the earth-goddess by a higher power in serpent shape seems to have been present in all the religions of Western Asia, and was therefore extremely likely to be caught hold of by an early form of Gnosticism. In no other respect does this so-called “Sethian” heresy seem to have anything in common with Christianity, and it may therefore represent a pre-Christian form of Ophitism. The serpent in it is, perhaps, neither bad nor good.
[250] τούτοις δοκεῖ, “it seems to them.”
[251] Cruice and Macmahon both translate this “into the same nature with the spirit.”
[252] This anxiety of the higher powers to redeem from matter darkness or chaos, the scintilla of their own being which has slipped into it, is the theme of all Gnosticism from the Ophites to the Pistis Sophia and the Manichæan writings. See Forerunners, II, passim.
[253] Or “the substances brought up to the sealer.”
[254] ἰδέαι. And so throughout.
[255] Schneidewin, Cruice, and Macmahon would here and elsewhere read ὁ φαλλὸς. But see the next sentence about pregnancy.
[256] ἐξετύπωσεν, “struck off.”
[257] πρωτόγονος. The others were “unbegotten” like the highest world of the Peratæ and Naassenes.
[258] εἴδεσιν.
[260] This idea of a divine son superior to his father is common to the whole Orphic cosmogony and leads to the dethroning of Uranus by Kronos, Kronos by Zeus and finally of Zeus by Dionysos. It is met with again in Basilides (see Book VII infra).
[261] A lacuna here which Cruice thus fills.
[262] This has not been previously described. Is the narrative of the Fall alluded to?
[263] Cruice and Macmahon would translate “any other than man’s.”
[264] Phil. ii. 7. The only quotation from the N.T. other than that from Matt. used by the Sethians, if it be not, as I believe it is, the interpolation of Hippolytus.
[265] ἀπελούσατο. Yet it may refer to baptism which preceded initiation in nearly all the secret rites of the Pagan gods. Cf. Forerunners, 1, c. 2.
[266] The whole of this paragraph reads like an interpolation, or rather as something which had got out of its place. The statement about the physicists is directly at variance with the opening of the next which attributes the Sethian teaching to the Orphics. The triads he quotes are all of three “good” powers and therefore would belong much more appropriately to the system of the Peratæ. The quotation from Deut. iv. 11, he attributes to several other heresiarchs.
[267] The codex has ὀμφαλός for ὁ φαλλὸς which is Schneidewin’s emendation. No book attributed to Orpheus called “Bacchica” has come down to us, but the Rape of Persephone was a favourite theme with Orphic poets. Cf. Abel’s Orphica, pp. 209-219.
[268] This is not improbable; but Hippolytus gives us no evidence that this is the case, as Plutarch, from whom he quotes, certainly did not connect the frescoes of Phlium in the Peloponnesus (not Attica as he says) with the Sethians, nor does the light in their story desire the water.
[269] This too is a stock quotation which has already done duty for the Naassene author. Cf. p. 131 supra.
[271] κράσις ... μίξις.
[272] καταμεμῖχθαι λεπτῶς.
[273] τέχνη.
[274] Matt. x. 34.