Chapter VI: Pre-Christian Gnostics: Simon Magus (1)

We see, then, that the Essenes, in spite of the quietism and love of peace that they professed, became in the long run either the instigators of political revolt or, at best, the tools of those who thought to make use of the fanaticism excited by their teaching in order to throw off the yoke of the Gentiles. But these fanatics were almost exclusively the Jews of Judaea, whose adherence to their own institutions caused them to leave Babylon, where they were fairly well off, to be cooped up in a land which in no time can have yielded an easy subsistence to a large number of souls[541]. That people so circumstanced, confronted with a power vastly superior to their own, and resolutely bent on compelling its subjects to enter into its own system of orderly government, should have looked to rebellion and supernatural help as their sole means of escape, was only to be expected. But there were besides a great number of Jews dispersed among the heathen, who had succeeded in acquiring vast wealth together with the power which wealth brings with it; and these were by no means inclined to upset the settled order of things which the rise of the Roman Empire had brought into the East. To the humble fisherman, vinedresser or husbandman of Judaea, daily vexed and harassed by the Roman tax-gatherer and Roman police measures, the Roman peace, the freedom from foreign conquest, and the higher standard of comfort that came in with the legions, must have appeared far less desirable than they did to the rich trader of Alexandria, Caesarea, or Damascus, whose aptness in taking advantage of the foibles of his rulers had enabled him to imitate their luxury and in some cases to share their power[542]. Yet, with the tenacity peculiar to their nation, even these rich Jews outside Palestine, while adopting gladly enough the material benefits of the Graeco-Roman civilization, clung firmly to the one exclusively national possession which remained to them, the Law of Moses with all its observances. They were, however, quite sharp enough to see that the rules laid down for the conduct of a loosely-compacted mass of nomad tribes suddenly flung among hostile neighbours were unfitted to a more settled civilization; and the thinkers among them were put to much pains to discover some means by which they could claim their share of Hellenistic culture without ceasing to be Jews[543]. At first this generally took the form of pseudonymous writings bearing the name of some author respected by the Greeks, and designed to prove that all the Hellenistic arts, sciences, and doctrines were derived from the Hebrew patriarchs. Thus, verses were ascribed to Orpheus and the Sibyl, and historical works to Hecataeus of Abdera and a certain Aristaeus, having for their object the praise of the Jewish nation, which were certainly not written by the authors whose names were appended to them. So Artapanus’ book “On the Jews” claimed that the Egyptians were indebted to the Hebrews for all they knew, including even the worship of their gods, and that this went back to the days of Abraham, who availed himself of his stay in Egypt to teach astrology to the Pharaoh of his time[544].

History, however, was at all times much less to the taste of the Jews than metaphysics, and the many teachers of philosophy scattered through the Hellenistic world found in them eager scholars, who were willing to listen respectfully to any doctrine, so long as it could be shown to be not inconsistent with their national religion and traditions. The most sincere attempt thus to combine Hellenic and Jewish teaching that has come down to us is that of Philo of Alexandria, who wrote probably shortly after the Birth of Christ. In his system[545], God is undefinable and has no qualities that can be perceived by man. As He is absolutely perfect, He cannot come into contact with matter, and all His dealings with it must therefore be conducted through intermediate beings. These intermediate beings are the powers or attributes of God, inconsistently, as Zeller points out, figured by Philo “as at once independent hypostases and immanent determinations of the Divine existence[546].” All the Divine Powers are summed up in the Logos or Word of God, who is not only their chief but their source, and the great intermediary between God and the universe. He is neither unbegotten nor begotten after the manner of finite things, but is the vicegerent and ambassador of God, who constantly makes intercession for the world. As for man, his soul is itself nothing but one of those powers of God which in another state of existence are called angels or daemons, and it is his material body which is the source of all evil, and the prison of the soul. Man can only free himself from this by resisting the allurements of the senses, which God puts it into his heart to do. By such resistance, he can exceptionally and occasionally acquire such virtue that, even in this life, he may attain to the Divine Vision, when he will be “lifted above and out of himself,” and the Spirit of God will henceforth dwell in him and “stir him like the strings of a musical instrument.” In the ordinary way, however, his emancipation will only take place when his soul returns to its original incorporeal condition, a reward which is bestowed on those who have kept themselves free from attachment to this sensuous body[547].

That people holding tenets so far removed from anything in the Law and the Prophets should form themselves into small sects or societies[548] and take other means for their propagation is only natural, and no doubt many such sects of which we have lost all trace existed in secret among the Hellenizing Jews at the beginning of the Christian era[549]. Such a sect were probably the Sethiani described by Hippolytus, whose “entire system,” according to the author of the _Philosophumena_, was derived from “the ancient theologians Musaeus, Linus, and Orpheus, who elucidates especially the ceremonies of initiation as well as the Mysteries themselves[550].” So far as Hippolytus explains their system, which he appears to have very imperfectly understood, it set forth three principles, which he calls “Light, Darkness, and an intermediate one which is Spirit”; but all the passages quoted from the “Paraphrase of Seth,” which he declares to be the work of the sect in question, refer for their authority to the Old Testament, which it is evident the Sethiani received as a real revelation[551]. But the one of these half-Jewish half-Gentile sects of which we have the most detailed account is that which passed under the name of Simon Magus, whom the Fathers of the Church were unanimous in describing as the parent and origin of all later Gnosticism[552].

This Simon, the New Testament describes as a man who had formerly “used sorcery, and bewitched the people of Samaria, giving out that himself was some great one: to whom all gave heed, from the least to the greatest, saying ‘This man is the great power of God[553]’.” The author of the Acts then goes on to say that Simon “believed” and was baptized by Philip, and that when Peter and John came from Jerusalem to Samaria, “he offered them money saying: Give me also this power, that on whomsoever I lay hands, he may receive the Holy Ghost.” It is from this offer, which seems to betray a desire to set up a Church of his own, that his name, curiously enough, has since been associated in ecclesiastical law with the offence of buying and selling benefices or cures of souls[554]. Of Simon’s future career, however, the Acts of the Apostles tell us nothing save that he left Peter with the request for the Apostle’s prayers on his behalf. It is evident, from the text quoted above, that both Simon’s sorceries and his acclamation by the people as “the great power of God” took place before his conversion to Christianity, whether this was real or feigned. Hence, Simon must have been at the time already the leader of a school or sect, and as the events narrated are in the same book set out before the Conversion of St Paul and his preaching to the Gentiles, this sect must have been a pre-Christian one[555].

That this sect was also one of those which sought to reconcile Judaism with Hellenism seems antecedently probable. Samaria had been stripped of a great part of its former inhabitants by Alexander the Great and Ptolemy Soter, who had colonized it by “Macedonian” settlers, probably of Syrian blood[556]. These colonists had accepted without difficulty the religious reforms of Antiochus Epiphanes, and had offered that king, according to Josephus, to dedicate their temple on Mt Gerizim to Zeus Hellenios[557]. Later, on the death of Antiochus, John Hyrcanus, the ethnarch or high-priest of the Jews, on the same authority, “revolted from the Macedonians,” invaded Samaria, besieged its chief city and, when he gained possession of it, entirely demolished it[558]. Gabinius, when proconsul of Syria, rebuilt this and other cities which had been destroyed by the Jews, and Herod the Great about 25 B.C. restored and beautified it while renaming it Sebaste in honour of Augustus[559]. These events had intensified the hatred already existing between the Jews and the Samaritans, and this was not diminished by the possession by the latter of the Mt Gerizim temple which was in some sort the rival of that of Jerusalem[560]. To judge from its later developments, the religion of the Samaritans at the beginning of the Christian era retained little of Judaism besides a reverence for the Pentateuch or Five Books of Moses[561], and its other elements were apparently Greek. We should therefore expect to find in Simon’s teaching before his meeting with the Apostles, a leaning towards a mixed religion in which Greek elements played the chief part, although the sanction attached to it might be Jewish.

Such an expectation is abundantly justified by the evidence of post-Apostolic writers. The documents known as the _Clementine Homilies_ and _Recognitions_ are now generally admitted to be a kind of religious novel or romance composed for edification, and no consensus of opinion exists as to their date, which has been taken by many learned critics as ranging from the Ist to the IVth century A.D.[562]. They set forth with much detail how Simon, after his first meeting with St Peter in Samaria, everywhere opposed the chief of the Apostles, and followed him about on many of his journeys, disputing with him at great length, until finally put to flight by the superior dialectic of Peter[563]. The Apocryphal _Acts of Peter and Paul_, which seem to be either wholly or in part earlier than 275 A.D., further narrate that Simon attempted to convert to his heresy the Emperor Nero, by flying over the Campus Martius at Rome in a car drawn by demons; but was vanquished by St Peter, who by a solemn adjuration caused him to fall violently to the earth and thus to perish miserably[564]. This story became later the universal tradition of the Catholic Church. All the patristic writers agree that Simon Magus was accompanied in his missionary journeys by a woman of immoral life whom he called the Ennoia or Thought of God, and declared to be a reincarnation of Helen of Troy[565], while one of the Clementine documents makes her, together with Simon, to have been among the followers of John the Baptist[566]. There is no external corroboration of either story; and such accusations of immorality were too frequently bandied about between the early Christians and their adversaries for any particular weight to be laid upon them[567]. Nor need the latest German theory, that Simon Magus is in the Clementine literature but a pseudonym for St Paul as the supposed opponent of St Peter, be discussed here[568].

The first writer who gives us any authoritative account of Simon’s pre-Christian teaching is Hippolytus, who in his _Philosophumena_ quotes freely from a book which he attributes to Simon and calls the _Great Announcement_[569]. Whether this be really Simon’s work or no, its quotation in the _Philosophumena_ at least proves that a sect bearing his name existed in the sub-Apostolic age, and that they held the doctrines set forth in Hippolytus’ quotations from this document, which can hardly have been due to anyone else in the first instance than Simon himself[570]. In the _Great Announcement_ the First Cause of all things is declared to be fire, on the strength of the statement in Deuteronomy that “God is a burning and consuming fire[571].” This Infinite or Boundless Power, as he calls it, Simon held to be not simple but two-fold, having two natures, a hidden and a manifold one, so intermingled that “the hidden one is concealed in the manifest, and the manifest comes into being from the hidden one,” by which, as we shall see later, he meant male and female. The manifest, again, can be perceived by the senses like things with an actual existence, while the hidden nature can only be apprehended by the mind, or in other words imagined. In all this he seems at first sight to be echoing, as Hippolytus points out[572], the notions of Plato upon the Intelligible (τὸ νοητόν) and the Sensible (τὸ αἰσθητόν), those of Aristotle on Power or Potentiality (δύναμις) and Actual Existence (ἐνέργεια), and, as Hippolytus does _not_ say, those of Philo upon the First Cause and the Logos[573]. The Cosmos or ordered universe came into being, Simon goes on to say, from the unbegotten or self-existent fire, by means of six “Roots” called respectively Mind (Νοῦς) and Thought (Ἔννοια)[574], Voice (Φωνή) and Name (Ὄνομα), Reason (Λογισμός) and Desire (Ἐνθύμησις). Although it is not here formally stated, it is noteworthy that this is a system of couples or pairs, the name of one of each of the above pairs being masculine and the other feminine[575]. In these six, Simon imagined that the Boundless Power existed potentially, but not actually, that is to say, that each of them represented one particular aspect or quality under which the Supreme Being might be considered, but had no existence apart from Him, while it required the addition together of all the six to make up His entire being. A similar conception seems to underlie the Zoroastrian idea of the six Amshaspands, from which it is likely enough that Simon copied this part of his system[576]. It is here that we meet for the first time in Gnosticism with the idea of emanation or the flowing-forth of the Divine nature, which differs entirely from that of creation, whether _e nihilo_ or from pre-existing matter, inasmuch as the emanation still remains connected with the parent source and never forms an entity distinct from it[577].

We see, then, that in Simon’s system, the primal world was a hebdomad or consisted of seven Powers, being the three pairs of Roots enumerated above together with a seventh, their source, in whom they were all summed up[578]. But after this, and apparently created by it, is a second or intermediate world, as to which the _Great Announcement_ thus expresses itself:

“Unto you therefore I say what I say, and write what I write. The
writing is this. There are two stocks of all the Aeons put together,
having neither beginning nor end, springing from one Root, the which
is Power-Silence, invisible, incomprehensible (ἀκατάληπτος)[579], Of
which two stocks, one appears above, which is a great Power, the
Mind of the universes, which pervades all things, and is male: the
other [appears] below, a great Thought, is female, and gives birth
to all things. Thus, these, corresponding to one another[580], form
a pair (συζυγία), and show forth the Middle Space (διάστημα), an
incomprehensible air having neither beginning nor end. In this is
the Father who sustains (βαστάζων) all things and nourishes all
those things which have a beginning and end[581]. This is he who
standeth, hath stood, and shall stand[582], being both a male and
female power after the likeness of the pre-existing Boundless
Power[583], which has neither beginning nor end, but exists in
Oneness (Μονότης). For the Thought which came forth from the power
in Oneness became two[584]. And each of them was one. For he, when
he contained her within himself, was alone, nor was he the first,
although he existed before, but having appeared from himself, a
second came into being. But he was not called Father before
[Thought] had named him Father. Just as, then, he drawing forth
himself from himself manifested to himself his own Thought, so the
same Thought when she appeared did not create him, but, beholding
him, concealed the Father, that is to say, Power, within herself,
and [thus] there exists a male-and-female (_i.e._ hermaphrodite)
Power-and-Thought. For Power does not in any way differ from
Thought, they being one. Without the things which are above is found
Power; without those which are below, Thought. Thus, there is that,
also, which appeared from them, the which being one is found to be
two, a male-and-female containing the female within itself. This one
is Mind in Thought; for they, being one when undivided (ἀχώριστος)
from one another, are [yet] found to be Two[585].”

This statement seems at first to be merely an explanation and recitation of what has been previously said as to the emanation of the “Roots” from the Boundless Power, and by no means justifies the words of the _Great Announcement_ in which it is magniloquently proclaimed to be “the Book of the Showing-forth of Voice and Name from the Thought of the Great Boundless Power. Wherefore it will be sealed up and hidden and veiled and will rest in the habitation wherein the root of the worlds is established (Θεμελιόω)[586].” But when we examine the words just quoted by the light of the other systems said to be derived from Simon’s, we see that they really indicate the belief of the author in a succession of worlds, wherein every later or lower one is a reflection, as in a glass, of that which was above it[587]. These lower worlds, like the primal one, should each contain three pairs of “Roots,” emanating from one source like rays from a lamp or other source of light. It also seems that this source is, alike in the primal world and its successors, in itself potentially both male and female, that is to say, the female nature, which alone has the power of conception or producing new beings, was originally concealed within the other as a thought is concealed within the mind, and only becomes comprehensible when utterance is given to it. Hence each of these Powers or, as Simon here calls them for the first time, aeons, like the Supreme Being, has a double aspect. Seen from below, that is to say, as it appears to the aeon which succeeds it, it is female, that is to say, a source of being. To that which is above it, or earlier in emanation, it is male, that is to say, it is the cause of conception, and also the sustainer and director at once of the conceiver and of that which she conceives[588].

Why now did Simon, or whoever wrote under his name, use such obscure and at first sight unintelligible terms for his speculations on the nature of the Supreme Being and the origin of the world? Simply, it would seem, that he might reconcile two things which like certain chemicals found themselves in presence of each other without any affinity for combination. These were the Mosaic Law which, since the Captivity, both Jew and Samaritan held themselves bound to treat as divinely inspired[589], and the Greek “theological” ideas which then pervaded the whole civilized world and were at the time accepted by all educated men who thought about such subjects in much the same way as are in these days the conclusions of physical science[590]. This forced him and others who attempted to found a religion acceptable to both Jew and Greek, to use language which could be interpreted in their own sense by either. His Supreme Being is One, as Israel declared that her God was One, but, by a not immodest metaphor, he contains within himself the power of becoming both male and female, as Adonis, or Attis, or Dionysos, or, to take the mythological person he most resembles, the Orphic Phanes, was both male and female[591]. Simon also goes out of his way to affirm that his first syzygy or pair, Mind and Thought, are in the second world called Heaven and Earth, and thus forms a pretty close parallel to the Orphic couple Uranos and Ge[592]. But he is careful to mix with this explanations which shall also accord with the account of creation given in the Book of Genesis. He who standeth, hath stood, and will stand, _i.e._ the Eternal Being who is not liable to fall or corruption, and is the “Father” of the “Middle Space” is no less the “I am that I am” of Exodus than the Father of gods and men of Homer. So, too, his companion from the beginning, called Silence, because she has no independent existence until he gives utterance to his thought, resembles the Nux or Night of Orpheus from whom Phanes begot Heaven and Earth; but she is also, as Simon expressly says, the Spirit of God which moved over the face of the waters in the Mosaic account of the Creation[593]. If, again, Simon makes his first pair of “Roots” in the second world Heaven and Earth, his second pair, Voice and Name, he declares to be equivalent to the Sun and Moon, and his third, Reason and Desire, to Air and Water[594]. This, he expressly says, is because the Book of Genesis says that three clear days elapsed before the Sun and Moon came into being, and these three “days” are an allusion to the Boundless Power and the first pair Mind and Thought[595]. To a much greater extent than Philo, therefore, Simon uses the religious traditions of both Greeks and Hebrews to give sanction to his own speculations.

The use of the word aeon, which our English Testament translates “age” (_saeculum_) as the generic name of the six Roots or Powers reflected in the second universe, seems also to have peculiar signification in this connection. Among the Greeks, Hesiod sang of a golden age, succeeded by others of silver, of brass, of one unnamed metal, and finally one of iron; and the Orphics, working after their manner on older materials, assigned the first of these ages to their god Phanes, and the others to Night, Uranos, Kronos, and Zeus in succession, asserting that the last age would be that of Dionysos[596]. The use of the word by Simon seems to show that he conceived his emanations or “Roots” as succeeding one another and perhaps depending from one another like the links of a chain. But as he had already personified these emanations, we have the curious result that he considered them both as persons—or, to be more accurate, aspects of the Deity—and spaces of time. Nor was this all. The great spread given to the Chaldaean star-worship throughout the East by the events described in Chapter III above, had caused the stars to be accepted by every nation in the Hellenist world as the most convenient types of divinity[597]. The planets, including in that phrase the Sun and Moon, were all known by the names of the most important gods in the various pantheons of all the nations of antiquity, and were thought in some not very clearly defined way to be identified with the divinities whose names they bore[598]. Even before the time of Alexander, the Platonic cosmogony had made of the stars and planets habitations where the souls of men were supposed to rest on their way to mortal bodies[599]; and Philo, while admitting that the stars were the rulers of earthly things, could do no more than remind his readers that they were not independent rulers, but only viceroys of Yahweh[600]. Hence Simon, when he called three of his aeons by the names of Earth, Sun, and Moon, made them places or worlds as well as persons and periods of time. It was an extraordinary complication of ideas from which none of the Gnostics who followed him succeeded in entirely freeing themselves[601].

To return, however, to Simon’s system of emanations. Have we any right to consider that the Heaven and Earth, Sun and Moon, and Water and Air, with which he peopled his second universe, were those which are perceptible by our senses, or did he regard them as existing above our ken and as merely the patterns which were in their turn reflected into our universe? Hippolytus unfortunately breaks off his quotations from the _Great Announcement_ at this point, and his own report of Simon’s doctrines is neither lucid nor implicitly to be trusted. Irenaeus, however, writing half a century before Hippolytus, declares that it was the female aeon Thought, whom we have seen is equivalent in the second or intermediate world to Ge or Earth, “who, comprehending the wish of the Father, descended to the lower regions, and there produced angels and the lower authorities (αί κάτω ἐξουσίαι) who made the universe (κόσμος)[602].” If we believe, as seems most probable, that Simon carried his theory of the lower world being a reflection of the upper throughout all existing things, it follows that the second world, containing as we have seen Heaven and Earth, Sun and Moon, and Air and Water together with “the Father” in whom the six were contained, was the pattern or paradigmatic world which was reflected in the lower universe to which we belong. In this case it is probable that the six “Roots” again changed their generic name, and after having been called powers (δυνάμεις) in the primal world, and aeons in the second, were now designated angels and authorities. If this conjecture is right, we have here a parallel to the chain of being fabled by the Orphics which, beginning with the gods, descended through demi-gods, heroes, and demons down to men. An accurate knowledge of the different ranks of this supramundane hierarchy was, as has been said, of great importance for magical purposes such as exorcism, and its description occupied a great part of the Enochian literature[603].

Simon, however, had still to account for the creation of man and the part which he played in the scheme of the universe. His reverence for Moses prevented him from directly contradicting the statement in Genesis that Yahweh “formed man out of the dust of the ground,” and this he echoes in the words of the Septuagint, which speaks of God moulding (ἔπλασε) man by “taking dust (χοῦς) from the Earth (Γῆ).” The part here played by the Yahweh of Genesis he transfers to “the Father” of his second or intermediate world[604]; and as Genesis says that God made man in his own image, he is also compelled to say that man was originally made in the likeness of the Father. But “the Father” of Simon’s intermediate world was, as we have seen, an hermaphrodite, or rather a male containing a female power within himself[605]. Hence man was originally both male and female, or in the words of the _Great Announcement_ “not simple, but double according to image and resemblance[606].” But this was clearly not the man of this world as we know him, but the Heavenly or Archetypal Man who remained in the world above ours, and was, as Philo held, a man-woman[607]. How did Simon account for the separation of the sexes, and its influence upon subsequent humanity?

The answer to this question involves Simon’s ideas as to the cause of evil in this world and the means by which man can escape from it. Man was, as we have seen, formed out of dust, but to make him, in the words of Genesis, “a living soul,” it was necessary that he should be animated by the breath (πνεῦμα) of the Divinity. So efficiently was this done that everyone, as Simon said, has within him potentially but not in act, “that which is blessed and incorruptible,” that is to say, “He who standeth, hath stood and will stand,” or in other words the “Father” of the intermediate world. “He it is,” he goes on to say, “who stood above in the Unbegotten Power, who stands below, coming into being by reflection (ἐν εἰκόνι) in the rush of the waters, and will stand above by the side of the blessed and Unbegotten Power if he should receive reflection or image (ἐὰν ἐξεικονισθῇ)[608].” For “there are three who stand, and unless there are three aeons that stand, the unbegotten one, who according to them [Qy. the Hebrews?] was borne over the face of the water, is not in her proper place in the universe (οὐ κοσμεῖται)[609]. The which unbegotten one is fashioned by resemblance as perfect and heavenly, but becomes, in regard to Thought alone, inferior to the Unbegotten Power.” This Unbegotten Power, he goes on to say in words that remind one of several different myths[610], is the “One power cloven in twain above and below, who gives birth to itself, increases itself, seeks itself, finds itself, being its own mother, its own father, its own sister, its own spouse (σύζυγος), its own daughter, its own son, a mother-father [and is] _one_, being the root of all the universes[611].” It was the Thought of this Power who was charged with bringing the Divine Spark to this world; but apparently, while she was brooding over the face of the waters, she was seized by the angels and authorities whom she had produced, “through motives of jealousy, because they were unwilling to be looked upon as the progeny of any other being[612].” These words are put into the mouth of Simon by Irenaeus, who goes on to say that Thought was thus prevented from returning to the Father and was shut up in a human body. At this point, the account of Irenaeus agrees with that of the _Philosophumena_ which narrates that (according to Simon) the world-making angels caused Thought (Ennoia) to enter one body after another, including that of Helen of Troy (_causa teterrima belli_), until she finally entered into the body of Simon’s companion Helena whom he found in a brothel at Tyre[613]. Hippolytus says, however, that Simon made up this part of the story out of shame as regards his disciples[614] in order to explain his companying with Helena, and it may be noticed that he nowhere quotes the _Great Announcement_ in its support[615]. Epiphanius, who seems to have used the same documents as Irenaeus, gives a different reason for the conduct of the world-making angels from that of Irenaeus, and makes out that they were seduced by the beauty of “Epinoia,” as he calls Ennoia or Thought, the female aeon who had come down, and detained her below out of sensual desire[616]. Both Irenaeus and Epiphanius are agreed that Simon in some way “redeemed” Helena, although they do not say in what way, and Hippolytus declares that Simon having purified Helena, in like manner brought salvation to men by his own discernment[617]. Why Simon should thus have power of salvation he does not explain directly, but he, Irenaeus, and Epiphanius alike tell us, by what seems to be a wilful or unconscious misinterpretation of the account in the New Testament[618], that Simon gave himself out as the Supreme God, who, seeing that the angels mismanaged this world from their desire for rule, came here to put it right and descended through the different worlds, changing his shape in each to accord with that of the rulers therein, until he appeared here as man, “although he was not a man[619].” Hippolytus further says, as does Irenaeus, that Simon was alleged “to suffer in Judaea in the likeness of Jesus, although in appearance only, and to have appeared to the Jews as Son, to the Samaritans as Father, and to the other nations as the Holy Spirit[620].” His death he accounts for by the story, found nowhere else in post-Christian literature, that at some place, the name of which has slipped out of the text of the _Philosophumena_, Simon

“taught sitting under a plane-tree. Moreover, exposure being at hand
through long delay, he said that if he were buried alive he would
rise again the third day. And a grave having been dug by his orders
by his disciples, he directed that he should be buried. His
disciples did what he commanded, but he remained there to this day.
For he was not Christ[621].”

In all this account, Hippolytus gives an entirely different account from that of the Clementines, with the manifest purpose of holding Simon up to obloquy as one of the “false Christs” predicted in the New Testament. It is obvious also that, so far from giving us Simon’s pre-Christian teaching, he is here handing down a garbled account of some tradition of the heresiarch’s disciples after his death.

That the stories told by the Fathers, except when they are quoting immediately from the _Great Announcement_, are not a trustworthy account of Simon’s doctrines is evident from their manifest inconsistency. If Simon’s disciples believed, as Hippolytus says, in the lawfulness of promiscuous intercourse, why should he feel called upon to justify to them by an artifice his connection with Helena? If, too, Simon, or the Supreme Being in his likeness, came down from the highest heaven to earth for the sake of redeeming his spouse Epinoia there held captive, why did he not return with her when recovered, and for what purpose did he simulate death in Judaea? Nor is there any plausible reason assigned for the angels’ detention of Epinoia on earth by Hippolytus, which he attributes, like Irenaeus before him, to jealousy and the desire for rule, any more than by Epiphanius, who will have it to be caused by their concupiscence—a story probably derived from the account of the Watchers in the _Book of Enoch_. Hippolytus makes Epinoia come to earth to establish, instead of taking away, the rule of the angels, who were by his account her own progeny; and if the angels were, as Epiphanius says, inflamed with love for her, the last thing they would be likely to do would be to transform her out of her first and heavenly shape, and finally place her in a brothel—as they are said to have done with Helena, Simon’s mistress.

The key to Simon’s theory on the connexion between the salvation of mankind and its division into sexes is probably to be found in a paragraph in the _Philosophumena_ in which Hippolytus seems to quote directly from the _Great Announcement_:

“And because,” he says, “the beginning of the generation of things
which are begotten[622] is from fire, he [Simon] devises (κατανόει)
a certain similar figure. Generation of all such things exists,
[and] the beginning of the desire of generation comes from fire. So,
for example, to desire changeable generation is called being
inflamed with love. But the fire, which is one, undergoes two
changes. In the man,” he says, “the blood which is hot and yellow as
typifying fire is changed into seed; but in the woman, the self-same
blood is changed into milk[623]. And the [result of the?] change of
the masculine blood is begetting; but the [result of the?] change of
the feminine, the nourishment of that which is begotten[624]. This,”
he says, “is the flaming sword turning both ways to guard the way to
the Tree of Life. For the blood turns into seed and milk, and that
power becomes [at once] mother and father of the things which are
born, and the increase of those which are nursed, having no need of
any external help and being sufficient unto itself. The Tree of
Life,” he says, “is guarded by the flaming sword turning both ways,
as we have said, [and] the seventh power which contains all things,
and which is stored up in the six powers, [comes forth?] from the
sword. For, if the flaming sword did not turn both ways, that
beautiful tree would be corrupted and destroyed. But if the Word
which is stored up potentially in them (the six powers), being the
lord of the proper place, is turned into seed and milk, within it is
born the Word of souls, beginning from the smallest spark, which
will be magnified and will increase and will become a boundless
power, unchangeable in the unchanging aeon, and it is born no more
until [it reaches?] the boundless aeon[625].”

The meaning of this very complicated and confused imagery—which we may be sure Hippolytus has purposely made as obscure and ridiculous as possible—seems to be this. In the two superior or heavenly worlds which we have called the primal and the second, the “roots” are male and female after the model of the Supreme Being. But this only means that the female is the external manifestation of the male, _within_ whom she has at one time been contained. No thought of sex, as we understand it, enters into their relations, and no progeny follows from their conjugation, the lower world coming into life after the pattern of the upper by an impulse which, although due in the first instance to the male, is translated into action by the female member of the first syzygy. But with our universe and the appearance of man, a change in the system takes place. Although our world, constituted after the heavenly model, contains the three pairs, Heaven and Earth, Sun and Moon, Air and Water, and is animated by the breath of life brought from above by Epinoia or Ennoia, man is formed from previously-existing matter and is therefore largely made up of an element hostile or repugnant to God. Lest the Divine spark within him should free itself from matter and return to the world above, each human soul has been divided, as Plato tells us in the _Symposium_[626], and the two parts placed in different bodies so that the male is imperfect without the female and the female without the male, and the soul can make no effort to raise itself in the world of being until it meets and is conjoined with its affinity. This is probably in Simon’s view the device of the angels, who have brought it about, according to Hippolytus, in order that Epinoia, the mother of life, may remain longer in the world and therefore prolong their rule[627]. But they are defeated by the Divine arrangement, which compels the two parts of the soul, after having once entered upon the round of mutable generation (ἡ μεταβλητὴ γένεσις), to change into one body after another according to the Orphic theory of transmigration until each meets with its twin. Thus did the soul of Helen of Troy pass from one body into another until in the shape of Helena of Tyre it met with its own affinity in the body of Simon. Then it became again bisexual after the image of the boundless power to which it would again rise. Thus must it be with all mankind until all the souls are thus disentangled from matter[628]. According to Hippolytus, this event is to coincide with the deliverance (λύσις) of the world, which seems to mean that it is to be freed from the rule of the angels. Irenaeus and Epiphanius twist this into the assertion that it is to be dissolved, while one of the later Gnostic documents says that it is to be “caught up,” that is to say, reabsorbed by the world of which it is the image. But Hippolytus expressly includes this last doctrine among those invented by “those who imitated the error” of Simon Magus, or in other words by his successors[629], and it need not therefore be here discussed.

Whence Simon derived the doctrine of which we get glimpses in the _Great Announcement_ will probably remain in doubt until we recover more fragments of that document. It appears likely, however, that he drew from a number of sources. Even in his day and after the wholesale depopulation of Samaria by the Syrians, Egyptians, and Jews, there must have remained many of the inhabitants who were lineal descendants of that mixed Semitic and Persian stock who “feared the Lord and served brazen images.” Hence his speculations may well have been influenced by the Persian religion of Zoroastrianism and Mazdeism, and some have thought that they can see in them traces of the primitive fire worship of the Magi[630]. Yet he need not have gone so far, for, as we have seen, his idea of fire as the origin of all things might well be taken from a too literal interpretation of a passage in the Samaritan Pentateuch. So with regard to the six “roots,” although they may have been mere copies of the Persian Amshaspands, they may also have come from a Pythagorean or Orphic source, since Athamas the Pythagorean is said to have taught that “there are four roots—fire, water, air, earth; for from these is the genesis of what is produced,” and a verse of Empedocles is preserved which makes the same assertion[631]. The likeness of Simon’s system to Egyptian and Alexandrian teaching is even closer. In ancient Egypt there was, as M. Maspero thinks, a well-defined system of correspondences including three worlds, each of which was a likeness or reflection of the preceding. At Hermopolis, too, there was worshipped an ogdoad or family of four pairs of gods and goddesses who on the same authority were merely attributes of one higher deity[632]. So in the tract _de Iside et Osiride_[633], we are told that genesis or coming into being is the image or reflection in matter of that which really exists, and that Horus, who seems here to represent the perceptible world, is the εἰκών or image of the νοητὸς κόσμος or ideal world, and is the child of this last world and matter. After all, there is little more in this than an extension of Plato’s theory of ideas which are the paradigms or patterns of perceptible things: but as Simon, according to the Clementines[634], had studied in Alexandria he may well have acquired such a notion either from Plato’s writings direct, or, as is more likely, from the Alexandrian religion of Serapis and Isis as set forth in the tract in question.

Of the history of the Simonian sect, we know very little more than has been said. The Fathers accuse the Simonians of leading immoral lives, of teaching the advisability of promiscuous intercourse, and of being addicted to magic[635]. Irenaeus declares that they worshipped an image of Simon in the likeness of Jupiter, and another of Helena in the shape of Athena[636], to which Hippolytus adds that they were exceedingly angry if any one ventured to call these statues either Simon or Helena and instantly cast him forth of the sect as being ignorant of their mysteries[637]. Eusebius—a very late witness—adds to this that they worshipped these images with “prostrations and incense and sacrifices and libations[638],” which taken with the other statements seems to show that the Simonians, or perhaps only the pre-Christian followers of Simon, really took part in the worship of the Greek gods Zeus and Athena, possibly by way of complaisance with the Greek and Roman rulers of Samaria, and that the likening of their statues to Simon and Helena was only the patristic gloss on the fact. Epiphanius goes further and attributes to them “mysteries of iniquity” and secret and obscene rites, including the filthy parody of the Eucharist depicted by the late J. K. Huysmans in his novel of _Là-Bas_[639]. But this also was an accusation common to the adherents and opponents of Christianity at the time he wrote. He also says that their sacrifices were offered to “the Father of the Universes” (τῶν ὅλων) through the rulers and authorities[640], and that they thought that the God of the Jews was one of the angels in this lower universe who created man and divided the nations among them by lot[641], an idea of which there is a trace in the Book of Daniel[642]. But it is plain that Epiphanius, in his desire to prove that Simon is the parent of all subsequent heresy, is here mixing together the opinions of different Gnostic sects with a result inconsistent even in his own eyes. That the later Simonians had secret rites after the manner of those described by Lucian in the case of Alexander of Abonoteichos[643] is likely enough, but rests on no real proof[644].

Of the extent and persistence of the religion set on foot by Simon we have some few indications, although these, too, hardly agree with one another. Irenaeus declares that he was succeeded in the leadership of the sect by Menander[645], another Samaritan, and this is confirmed by Epiphanius, Philaster, and all the lesser writers on heresy down to and including Eusebius[646]. Although there seems nothing new in the doctrine which they assign to Menander, it is very probable that, after Simon’s death, the tenets of the sect underwent a good deal of modification. According to Theodoret, the Simonians spread chiefly in Syria, Phrygia, and Rome[647]. Justin Martyr, writing in the reign of Antoninus Pius, speaks of their school as still existing apparently in Rome[648]. Origen, in the following reign, says indeed in his tract against Celsus that there were no Simonians to be found anywhere throughout the world[649]; but he was probably mistaken in this, as Eusebius in the reign of Constantine speaks of them as still numerous, although forced to hide themselves[650]. After this, and so soon as the Church, now triumphant, began in her turn to persecute, they no doubt either became converted to Christianity or joined other sects.

In these matters, as in many others concerning the Gnostics, the Fathers of the Church were badly informed. The Gnostic indifference to outward forms of religion made it very easy for any body of Gnostics to conceal themselves in time of persecution[651], and thus to resist in the most practical way any attempt to estimate their true strength, or the relations of the different sects to one another. Gnosticism was, as the Church was to find out later, a hydra, the heads of which when cut off renewed themselves with amazing rapidity. Moreover, the very essence of Gnosticism was secrecy for all but the initiated, and if we may judge from the words of the _Great Announcement_ quoted above, the Simonians took abundant care when they committed any of their doctrines to writing that the result should be unintelligible without a good deal of previous instruction. But if the fragments quoted are, as seems fairly certain, the work either of Simon Magus himself or of some prominent and early member of his school, the Fathers were abundantly justified in regarding him as the source of all subsequent Gnosticism. The syncretic religion which they unfold seems to have been admirably adapted to catch those “barbarian” enquirers, of whom there were evidently many in the first years of our era, who were trying by might and main to reconcile the traditions of Judaism with the Greek learning and culture for the first time brought within their reach. The system of terribly forced interpretation of the Jewish scriptures employed by the Simonians was probably their own invention, and would certainly never have passed muster in a community possessed of a modicum of literary sense[652]; yet it enabled them, as has been said, to turn their backs upon the plain meaning of the books of the Old Testament. By their doctrine of emanation, whether derived from Persian sources or not, they contrived, perhaps for the first time, to bridge the huge gulf fixed by the philosophy and physics of the time between their Supreme Being and the gross matter which was thought to exist independently of and in opposition to him; while their scheme of redemption, like that of the Orphics from whom they apparently borrowed, went far, as they boasted, to rob death of its terrors.

These features we find reproduced in the teachings of nearly every later sect and school into which we shall have to enquire, and although our information as to their doctrines is not exact enough to enable us to determine the extent of the obligations of all of them to the teaching of Simon, the chances are that in every case there was a more or less conscious borrowing. Nor did the influence of the Samaritan _magus_ cease with the suppression of the many heresies which the Fathers declared to be inspired by him. His speculations as to the succession of heavens and of orders of heavenly beings passed into the teaching of the Church[653] and obtained too firm a footing there to be dislodged until the German Reformation. The memory of them extended even beyond its pale, and while, in the VIIth century of our era, they came to inspire such cosmology as is taught in the Koran, the system of Sephiroth or successive emanations of the Deity, which underlies the farrago of mystical nonsense called in the Middle Ages the Cabala of the Jews, is directly derived from them. It may even be said that the influence of Simon’s doctrines is not even now extinct in Europe, for in the writings of Swedenborg, which still find exponents, many of his ideas seem to be revived.

That Simon’s system as described in the _Great Announcement_ was the result either of deep philosophic speculation or of original thought can hardly be said. Its one novel feature was the rather clumsy fusion of the Orphic cosmogony with the Mosaic account of creation, which reads like a parody on Philo’s well-thought-out doctrine. Philo was born, apparently, about 25 B.C., and was therefore in all probability a few years older than Simon, so that such a parody is not altogether impossible. One of the main differences between the two systems is that to the asceticism of Philo and the Essenes Simon opposed, not perhaps a recommendation to licence, but a theory making the union of the sexes part of the scheme for the redemption of mankind. By so doing, he probably made a much stronger appeal to Samaritans and Jews alike than did the strict celibacy demanded by Orphics, Essenes, and the other pre-Christian Gnostics. It is probable also that he included in his propaganda some sort of thaumaturgy or wonder-working of the kind employed, according to Lucian, by Alexander of Abonoteichos and, according to Irenaeus, by the Jewish impostor Marcus. Although the stories about this in the Clementines are manifestly fiction, we cannot absolutely reject the universal testimony of the Fathers that Simon and his followers made use of incantations and magical arts, and these are probably the “sorceries” with which the writer of the Acts declares he bewitched the Samaritans. Charlatanism, or more or less conscious imposture of this kind, was rife, as will be presently shown, among the lower classes of Palestine in his day, and would agree well with the bombastic language of the extracts from the _Great Announcement_ which Hippolytus has preserved for us.

Footnote 541:

The fanaticism of the Palestinian Jews in time affected their
co-religionists elsewhere, as when the Jews in Asia Minor rebelled and
committed atrocities in the reign of Trajan. See Morrison, _Jews under
Roman Rule_, p. 191, and Renan, _Les Évangiles_, Paris, 1877, p. 503.
Probably such outbreaks were condemned by those of the nation who had
anything to lose, as was certainly the case during the Revolt under
Hadrian.

Footnote 542:

Morrison, _op. cit._ p. 375; Mahaffy, _Greek Life and Thought_, 1887,
pp. 468-482; _Greek World under Roman Sway_, 1890, p. 47.

Footnote 543:

Schürer, _History of the Jewish People_, Eng. ed. II. pp. 157, 158.
One of the best proofs of this tendency is the fashion among all
classes of Jews at this period of giving their children Greek names.
See Mahaffy, _Greek Life and Thought_, p. 480. Even among the Apostles
we have Andrew and Philip.

Footnote 544:

Schürer, _op. cit._ II. pp. 206, 306, 309; Morrison, _op. cit._ p.
395.

Footnote 545:

Schürer, _op. cit._ II. pp. 369-380, following, as he tells us,
Zeller, gives an excellent and coherent account of Philo’s system,
which see. As Schürer points out (_op. cit._ II. p. 368), Philo
“hellenized” so thoroughly that practically the only Judaic elements
in his system are the assertion of monotheism, a contempt for
image-worship, and the claim that the Jews possessed through the
Mosaic revelation the highest religious knowledge.

Footnote 546:

Schürer, _op. cit._ II. p. 372. For a definition of hypostasis in this
connection and its original equivalence to οὐσία and _substantia_ (as
in the _Quicunque vult_), see Hatch, _Hibbert Lectures_, 1888, p. 275.

Footnote 547:

Were those who did not attain to this height in Philo’s opinion
annihilated or re-incarnated? His view that for the wicked this life
is the real hell (_De congr. erud. grat._ § XI.) would suit either
theory; but in _de Cherub._ § I. it is plain that he contemplates the
eternal punishment of the damned.

Footnote 548:

Secret, not from the jealous motive of the Gnostics, but because if
their opinions had become generally known they would have been cast
out of the synagogue.

Footnote 549:

So Renan, _Les Évangiles_, p. 452. It is quite possible that the sect
of the Essenes may have included many divisions.

Footnote 550:

Hippolytus, _Philosophumena_, Bk V. c. 3, p. 218, Cruice.

Footnote 551: