INDEX

CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BY JOHN CLAY, M.A. AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Footnotes

[1]. Col. ii. 18.

[2]. Lightfoot, St Paul’s Epistle to the Colossians, pp. 90 sqq.

[3]. So A. Jülicher in Encyc. Bibl. s.v. Gnosis.

[4]. Irenaeus, op. cit. Bk I. c. 23, p. 214, Harvey. Salmon in Dict. of Christian Biog. s.v. Nicolaitans, thinks this an idea peculiar to Irenaeus alone and not to be found in the older source from which he drew his account of the other Gnostics.

[5]. The Canonical Apocalypse was probably written after the siege of Jerusalem by Titus in 70 A.D., while the first unmistakable mention we have of St John’s Gospel is by Theophilus of Antioch a hundred years later. Earlier quotations from it are anonymous, i.e. they give the words of the Gospel as in the A.V. but without referring them to any specified author. See Duchesne, Early Christian Church, Eng. ed. pp. 102, 192.

[6]. Hegesippus, quoted by Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. Bk IV. c. 22, says that the Church was untroubled by heresy until the reign of Trajan.

[7]. Hegesippus (see last note) in his account of the martyrdom of “James the Brother of the Lord,” op. cit. Bk II. c. 23.

[8]. See Schmiedel, Encyc. Bibl. s.v. Community of Goods. Cf. Lucian, de Mort. Peregrini, c. XIII, and Mozley’s comments in Dict. Christian Biog. s.v. Lucianus.

[9]. Maran atha. See Epistle of Barnabas, c. XXI.

[10]. Winwood Reade, op. cit. pp. 237 sqq.

[11]. Eugène de Faye, “Formation d’un Doctrine de Dieu au IIme Siècle,” R.H.R. t. LXIII. (1911), p. 9. He quotes Harnack in his support.

[12]. Mark xi. 1.

[13]. On the ignorance of the first Christian writers, see de Faye, op. cit. p. 4.

[14]. Origen, cont. Celsum, Bk III. c. 12. Cf. Krüger, La Grande Encyclopédie, Paris, s.v. Gnosticisme.

[15]. “Those which say they are Jews, but are not”; Rev. ii. 9; ibid. iii. 9. The Clementine Homilies, though of much later date, never speak of the Christians otherwise than as Jews. Cf. Duchesne, Early Christian Church, p. 12.

[16]. Acts viii. 1.

[17]. Renan (L’Antéchrist, p. 511, and note 1) gives a passage, which he thinks is from Tacitus, showing that Titus aimed at the suppression of the Christians as well as the Jews. Doubtless many Christians perished in the punitive measures taken in the Ist century against the Jews in Antioch and elsewhere. Cf. Josephus, Wars of the Jews, Bk VII. c. 3; Eusebius, H. E. Bk III. cc. 12, 17, 19, 20. It was the persecution by the fanatical Jews that compelled the flight of the Christians to Pella shortly before the siege. See Eusebius, Bk III. c. 5; Epiph. Haer. XXIX. c. 7, p. 239, Oehler. The episode of the “Woman clothed with the Sun” of the Canonical Apocalypse is supposed by some to refer to this.

[18]. So that the members of the little Church of Pella who retained the name of Jews gradually ceased to be regarded as orthodox by the other Christian communities and were called Ebionites. See Renan, L’Antéchrist, p. 548. Cf. Fuller in Dict. Christian Biog. s.v. Ebionites for authorities. The connection that Fuller would find between the Essenes and the Ebionites seems to rest on little proof.

[19]. Thus Mgr Duchesne, op. cit. p. 14, says that “St Paul was a Jew by birth, imbued with the exclusiveness and disdainful spirit which inspired his race and influenced all their dealings with other nations.”

[20]. Many of the Sicarii and other fanatics managed to escape before the catastrophe of the First Jewish War to Egypt and the Cyrenaica, where they continued to commit outrages and make rebellion until they brought on themselves and their co-religionists the wrath of the Romans. See Josephus, Wars, Bk VII. cc. 10, 11. Cf. Renan, L’Antéchrist, p. 539; id., Les Évangiles, p. 369.

[21]. Abel’s Orphica, Frgs. 243-248, especially the quotation from Nigidius.

[22]. See Chapter II, supra.

[23]. So Renan, L’Antéchrist, p. 300, says that the Synoptic Gospels probably first took shape in the Church at Pella. Thus he explains the so-called “little Apocalypse” of Matthew xxiv., Mark xiii., and Luke xxi. Cf. ibid., p. 296 and note. For the symbolic construction placed upon them by the Gnostics, see Hatch, H. L., p. 75.

[24]. Hegesippus, who probably wrote about 150 A.D., speaks of Thebuthis, Dositheus, and others as leaders of early sects. Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. Bk IV. c. 22, and Origen (cont. Cels. Bk VI. c. 11) make this last a contemporary of Simon Magus. The Clementine Homilies (Bk II. c. 24), from whom both authors may have derived their information, have a long story about Dositheus being with Simon a follower of John the Baptist, and disputing with Simon the headship of the sect. From presumably other sources, Hegesippus speaks of the Essenes, the Masbothoeans and the Hemero-baptists, for which last see [Chapter XIII], infra, as pre-Christian sects.

[25]. Winwood Reade, op. cit. p. 244. Probably this is what is meant by Gibbon when he says (Decline and Fall, Bury’s ed. III. p. 153, n. 54) that no future bishop of Avila is likely to imitate Priscillian by turning heretic, because the income of the see is 20,000 ducats a year.

[26]. Apostolical Constitutions, Bk II. cc. 45, 46, 47. Harnack, Expansion of Christianity, Eng. ed. II. p. 98 n. 1, gives the date of this work as “middle of the 2nd century.” Duchesne, op. cit. p. 109, thinks it is derived from the Didache which he puts not later than Trajan.

[27]. Apost. Const. Bk II. c. 26: “He (i.e. the bishop) is your ruler and governor; he is your king and potentate; he is next after God, your earthly divinity, who has a right to be honoured by you.”

[28]. Lucian, Proteus Peregrinus, passim; Acts of Paul and Thekla; Acts of Peter of Alexandria.

[29]. Clement of Rome, First Epistle to the Corinthians, c. 44.

[30]. So Irenaeus, op. cit. Bk I. c. 26, pp. 219, 220, Harvey, says it was the desire to become a διδάσκαλος or teacher that drove Tatian, once a hearer of Justin Martyr’s, into heresy. Hegesippus, ubi cit. supra, says that Thebuthis first corrupted the Church, on account of his not being made a bishop. For the same accusation in the cases of Valentinus and Marcion, see Chapters IX and XI, infra.

[31]. Celsus apud Origen (op. cit. Bk III. cc. 10, 11) says: “Christians at first were few in number, and all held like opinions, but when they increased to a great multitude, they were divided and separated, each wishing to have his own individual party; for this was their object from the beginning”—a contention which Origen rebuts.

[32]. Thus in Egypt it was almost exclusively the lower classes which embraced Christianity at the outset. See Amélineau, “Les Actes Coptes du martyre de St Polycarpe” in P.S.B.A. vol. X. (1888), p. 392. Julian (Cyr. VI. p. 206) says that under Tiberius and Claudius there were no converts of rank.

[33]. Thus Cerinthus, who is made by tradition the opponent of St John, is said to have been a Jew and to have been trained in the doctrines of Philo at Alexandria (Theodoret, Haer. Fab. Bk II. § 3). Cf. Neander, Ch. Hist. (Eng. ed.) vol. II. pp. 42-47. Neander says the same thing about Basilides (op. cit. p. 47 and note) and Valentinus (p. 71), although it is difficult to discover any authority for the statement other than the Jewish features in their doctrines. There is more evidence for the statement regarding Marcus, the heresiarch and magician whom Irenaeus (op. cit. Bk I. c. 7) accuses of the seduction of Christian women, apparently in his own time, since the words of Marcus’ ritual, which the Bishop of Lyons quotes, are in much corrupted Hebrew, and the Jewish Cabala was used by him. Renan’s view (Marc Aurèle, pp. 139 sqq.) that Christianity in Egypt never passed through the Judaeo-Christian stage may in part account for the desire of Jewish converts there to set up schools of their own.

[34]. For Marcion, see [Chapter XI], infra. Summary accounts of the doctrines of other Gnostics mentioned are given by Irenaeus and Hippolytus in the works quoted. See also the Dict. of Christian Biog., under their respective names.

[35]. The lesser heresiologists, such as Philaster of Brescia, St Augustine, the writer who is known as Praedestinatus, the author of the tract Adversus omnes Haereses wrongly ascribed to Tertullian, and the other writers included in the first volume of Oehler’s Corpus Haereseologici, Berlin, 1856, as well as writers like Eusebius, all copy from one or other of these sources. The Excerpta Theodoti appended to the works of Clement of Alexandria are on a different footing, but their effect at the time spoken of in the text was not appreciated. Cf. Salmon in Dict. Christian Biog. s.v. Valentinus.

[36]. Bouché-Leclercq, L’Intolérance Religieuse et Politique, Paris, 1912, p. 140.

[37]. Ammianus Marcellinus, Bk XXII. c. 5, § 4.

[38]. An excellent and concise account of the discovery and the subsequent controversy as to the authorship of the book is given by Salmon in the Dict. Christian Biog. s.v. Hippolytus Romanus. For Mgr Duchesne’s theory that Hippolytus was a schismatic Pope, see his Hist. Christian Church, pp. 227-233.

[39]. Salmon’s position is set out by him in Hermathena, Dublin, 1885, pp. 389 sqq. For Stähelin’s, see his tractate Die Gnostische Quellen Hippolyts, Leipzig, 1890, in Harnack’s Texte und Untersuchungen. Both are skilfully summarized by de Faye in his Introduction à l’Étude du Gnosticisme, Paris, 1903, pp. 25 sqq.

[40]. De Faye does not accept Stähelin’s contention as to the forgery, but his conclusion as to the date is as stated in the text. See Introduction, etc. pp. 68, 71.

[41]. Tertullian, Scorpiace, c. 1.

[42]. Neander, Ch. Hist. (Eng. ed.), I. p. 208, quotes a case from St Augustine which I have not been able to verify.

[43]. Gibbon, Decline and Fall, II. p. 110 and note 144 (Bury’s ed.). For the search which the Christian emperors directed to be made for the heretics’ books, see Eusebius, Vita Constantini, Bk III. cc. 64, 65.

[44]. The actual transcription and translation were made by Maurice Schwartze, a young German who was sent over here to study the documents in the British Museum at the expense of the King of Prussia. He died after the completion of his task, and before the book could be printed.

[45]. Amélineau’s transcription and translation appeared in the Notices et Extraits, etc. of the Académie des Inscriptions, t. XXIX. pt 2 (Paris, 1891). He has also published a translation into French without text of the Pistis Sophia (Paris, 1895). Dr Carl Schmidt, of the University of Berlin, has published translations into German of both works under the title Koptisch-Gnostische Schriften, Bd I., Leipzig, 1905. None of these versions are entirely satisfactory, and it is much to be wished that an authoritative edition of the two works could be put forward by English scholars. The present writer gave a short history and analysis of them in the Scottish Review for 1893 under the title “Some Heretic Gospels.”

[46]. Clement was so far from being a heresiologist that he has not escaped the reproach of being himself a heretic. He repeatedly speaks in praise of the “true Gnostic,” meaning thereby the perfect Christian, and although this is probably a mere matter of words, it seems to have induced Photius in the IXth century to examine his writings with a jealous eye. The result was that, as M. Courdaveaux points out (R.H.R. 1892, p. 293 and note), he found him guilty of teaching that matter was eternal, the Son a simple creature of the Father, the Incarnation only an appearance, that man’s soul entered several bodies in succession, and that several worlds were created before that of Adam. All these are Gnostic opinions, and it may be that if we had all Clement’s books in our hands, as had Photius, we might confirm M. Courdaveaux’s judgment, as does apparently Mgr Duchesne. Cf. his Hist. of Christian Ch. pp. 244, 245.

[47]. Cf. A. C. McGiffert, Prolegomena to the Church History of Eusebius (Schaff and Wace’s Nicene Library), Oxford, 1890, vol. I. p. 179 and note.

[48]. Of the heresies mentioned in the Philosophumena only two, viz. that of Simon Magus and that of those whom Hippolytus calls the Sethiani, do not admit, either expressly or by implication, the divinity of Jesus. This may be accounted for by what has been said above as to both being pre-Christian in origin.

[49]. E.g. Irenaeus, op. cit. Bk I. c. 1, I. p. 9, Harvey. Here he is called ὅμοιος τε καὶ ἴσος τῷ προβαλόντι, “like and equal to him who had sent him forth.” There is certainly here no allusion to “begetting” in the ordinary sense of the word.

[50]. As in the epithet of Persephone in the Orphic Hymn quoted above. See Chapter IV, supra. The unanimity with which all post-Christian Gnostics accepted the superhuman nature of Jesus seems to have struck Harnack. See his What is Christianity? Eng. ed. 1904, pp. 209, 210.

[51]. Iliad I. ll. 560 sqq.; IV. ll. 57, 330; XIV. ll. 320 sqq.

[52]. Odyssey XI. ll. 600 sqq.; Plutarch, Life of Pelopidas, c. XVI.

[53]. Plutarch, de Is. et Os. c. LXXI.

[54]. Ibid. cc. XXV., XXVII., XXX.

[55]. Probably this was one of the reasons why the Mysteries which showed the death of a god had in Greece to be celebrated in secret. See Diodorus’ remark (Bk V. c. 77, § 3) that the things which the Greeks only handed down in secret were by the Cretans concealed from no one.

[56]. Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk VI. c. 19, p. 265, Cruice.

[57]. Irenaeus, op. cit. Bk I. c. 19, II. p. 200, Harvey.

[58]. ἀμορφία. Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk VII. c. 27, p. 366, Cruice.

[59]. Irenaeus, op. cit. Bk I. c. 18, p. 197, Harvey. Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk VII. c. 28, p. 368, Cruice.

[60]. Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk VIII. c. 8.

[61]. Irenaeus, op. cit. Bk I. c. 1, § 13, pp. cxli and 61, Harvey.

[62]. Ibid. Bk I. c. 1, § 31, pp. cxli and 62, Harvey.

[63]. Irenaeus, op. cit. Bk I. c. 19, § 3, p. 202, Harvey; Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk IV. c. 24, p. 225, Cruice; Tertullian, Scorpiace, c. I.

[64]. For the accusation against the Christians, see Athenagoras, Apologia, cc. III., XXXI.; Justin Martyr, First Apol. c. XXVI. For that against the Jews, Strack, Le Sang et la fausse Accusation du Meurtre Rituel, Paris, 1893. For that against the Freemasons, “Devil Worship and Freemasonry,” Contemporary Review for 1896.

[65]. See n. 1, supra. So Eusebius speaks of the Simonians receiving baptism and slipping into the Church without revealing their secret tenets, Hist. Eccl. Bk II. c. 1.

[66]. Revillout, Vie et Sentences de Secundus, Paris, 1873, p. 3, n. 1.

[67]. Amélineau, Le Gnosticisme Égyptien, p. 75, thus enumerates them: the doctrine of emanation, an unknown [i.e. an inaccessible and incomprehensible] God, the resemblance of the three worlds, the aeonology of Simon, and a common cosmology. To this may be added the inherent malignity of matter and the belief in salvation by knowledge. See Krüger, La Grande Encyclopédie, s.v. Gnosticisme.

[68]. Renan, Mare Aurèle, p. 114.

[69]. Witness the confusion between Ennoia and Epinoia in Chapter VI, vol. I. p. 180, n. 4, supra, and between Saturnilus and Saturninus in this chapter, p. 9. So Irenaeus and others record the opinions of an associate of Marcus whom they call “Colarbasus,” a name which modern criticism has shown to be a mistake for קול ארבע Kol-arba, “The Voice of the Four” or the Supreme Tetrad. See Renan, Mare Aurèle, p. 129; Hort in Dict. Christian Biog. s.h.v. So Clement of Alexandria, Protrept. c. II. mistakes Evoe, the mystic cry of the Bacchantes, for the Eve of Genesis.

[70]. Renan, L’Église Chrétienne, p. 140.

[71]. Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk V. c. 9, p. 177, Cruice.

[72]. As in the case of Clement of Alexandria, who seems to have been initiated into most of the heathen mysteries then current. It is to be noted, too, that Origen, although he speaks of the Ophites as an insignificant sect (see [Chapter VIII], infra), yet professes to know all about their secret opinions.

[73]. Renan, Marc Aurèle, p. 139.

[74]. Thus Ambrose of Milan had been before his conversion a Valentinian, Epiphanius a Nicolaitan. See Eusebius, H.E. Bk VI. c. 18; Epiph. Haer. XXVI. c. 17, p. 198, Oehler.

[75]. It could be even self-administered, as in the Acts of Paul and Thekla, where Thekla baptizes herself in the arena. See Tischendorf’s text. The Clementine Homilies (Bk XIV. c. 1) show that it could be immediately followed by the Eucharist without any intermediate rite or preparation. Contrast with this the elaborate ceremonies described by Cyril of Jerusalem, where the white-robed band of converts after a long catechumenate, including fasting and the communication of secret doctrines and passwords, approach on Easter Eve the doors of the church where the lights turned darkness into day. See Hatch, H. L. pp. 297, 299.

[76]. Duchesne, Hist. Christian Ch. p. 32; Harnack, What is Christianity? Eng. ed. p. 210.

[77]. As Hatch, H. L. pp. 274-279, has pointed out, the term όμοοὐσιος, which led to so much shedding of Christian blood, first occurs among the post-Christian Gnostics, and led in turn to most of the wranglings about “substance,” “person,” and the other metaphysical distinctions and their result in “strife and murder, the devastation of fair fields, the flame of fire and sword” (ibid. p. 279). For the possibilities of Greek science, had it not been opposed by the Church, see ibid. p. 26.

[78]. See the edict of Constantine, which Eusebius (Vit. Constantini, cc. LXIV., LXV.) quotes with unholy glee, prohibiting the Gnostics from presuming to assemble together either publicly or privately, and commanding that their “houses of prayer” should be confiscated and handed over to the Catholic Church. Eusebius (ibid. c. LXVI.) says that the result of this was that the “savage beasts crept secretly into the Church,” and continued to disseminate their doctrines by stealth. Perhaps such a result was to be expected.

[79]. “Eorum qui ante adventum Christi Haereseos arguuntur.” Philastrius, Ep. Brixiensis, de Haeresibus Liber, c. I. vol. I. p. 5, Oehler.

[80]. Augustinus, de Haeresibus (cf. ad Quod vult deum) Liber, c. XVII. I. p. 200, Oehler.

[81]. Pseudo-Tertullianus, Adversus omnes Haereses, cc. V., VI. p. 273, Oehler. The writer was probably Victorinus of Pettau.

[82]. Pseudo-Hieronymus, Indiculus de Haeresibus, c. III., vol. I. p. 285, Oehler.

[83]. Acts vi. 5. It will be noted that Epiphanius, who himself belonged to the sect in his youth, interposes only the Basilidians between them and the followers of Saturninus, the “heresy” of which last he derives directly from that of Simon Magus.

[84]. Rev. ii. 6, 15.

[85]. Origen, cont. Celsum, Bk VI. c. 28. Possibly the Euphrates called “the Peratic” or Mede by Hippolytus (op. cit. Bk IV. c. 2, p. 54, Cruice).

[86]. Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk V. c. 7, p. 141, Cruice. This Mariamne is doubtless the sister of Philip mentioned in the Apocryphal Acta Philippi (c. XXXII., Tischendorf), which have, as is said later, a strong Gnostic or Manichaean tinge. Celsus knew a sect which took its name from her. See Origen, cont. Cels. Bk V. c. 62.

[87]. The Canonical Apocalypse is not earlier than 70 A.D., and was probably written soon after the fall of the Temple of Jerusalem. Hippolytus and Origen wrote 130 years later.

[88]. Naassene is evidently derived from the Hebrew or Aramaean נחש “Serpent,” cf. Hipp. op. cit. Bk V. c. 6, p. 139, Cruice, and exactly corresponds to the Greek ὀφίτης and the Latin serpentinus (Low Latin serpentarius). “Worshipper of the Serpent” seems to be the patristic gloss on the meaning of the word.

[89]. Giraud, Ophitae, c. 4, § 65, p. 89. The question really depends upon Hippolytus’ sources, as to which see last chapter, pp. 11, 12. Cf. De Faye, Introduction, etc., p. 41. Hippolytus’ Naassene author cannot be much earlier than 170 A.D. since he quotes from St John’s Gospel, and probably later than the work of Irenaeus written in 180-185. Yet the Ophite system described by Irenaeus is evidently not a primitive one and has been added to by his Latin translator. See n. 3, p. 47, infra.

[90]. Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 27, § 1, p. 226, Harvey, says that the Ophites are the same as the Sethians; Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk V. c. 11, p. 184, Cruice, that they are connected with the Peratae, the Sethians, and the system of Justinus. Epiphanius, Haer. XXXVII. c. 1, p. 494, Oehler, while deriving them from Nicolaus the Deacon, gives them a common origin with those whom he calls Gnostics simply, and identifies these last with the Borboriani, Coddiani, Stratiotici, Phibionitae, Zacchaei, and Barbelitae (see Haer. XXVI. c. 3).

[91]. Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk V. c. 11, p. 184, Cruice.

[92]. ἑαυτοὺς γνωστικοὺς ὀνομάζοντες. Hippolytus, loc. cit. Eusebius, H. E. Bk IV. c. 7, says that Carpocrates was the father of the heresy of the Gnostics and contemporary with Basilides.

[93]. Epiphanius, Haer. XXVI. c. 7, pp. 174, 176, Oehler.

[94]. Tertullian, de Praescript. Haer. c. XLII.

[95]. Josephus, Antiq. Bk XII. c. 3.

[96]. Ramsay, Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia, II. pp. 667 sqq.; St Paul, pp. 142 sqq.; Commentary on Galatians, pp. 189 sqq. The fact that Timothy, the son of the Jewess Eunice by a Greek father, was not circumcised (see Acts xvi. 1) is quoted in support.

[97]. E.g. the Montanist, the most formidable of the heresies which attacked the primitive Church, apart from Gnosticism. Cf. also Galatians i. 6.

[98]. Mahaffy, Greek World under Roman Sway, p. 168. For the tyranny of the Armenians, see Plutarch, Lucullus, cc. XIV., XXI.

[99]. Mahaffy, Gk. World, p. 100.

[100]. Mahaffy, ibid. p. 225.

[101]. Ramsay, Cities, etc., I. p. 9.

[102]. Ramsay, Cities, etc., I. p. 87.

[103]. Ramsay, ibid. I. p. 92.

[104]. Ramsay, ibid. I. pp. 93, 94. The Galli or priests of Cybele, who mutilated themselves in religious ecstasy, seem to have been the feature of Anatolian religion which most struck the Romans, when the statue of the Mother of the Gods first appeared among them. Cf. next page. For the other side of the religion, see Lucian, de Dea Syria, cc. VI., XLIII., and Apuleius, Metamorph. Bk VIII. c. 29.

[105]. As in the hymn to Attis said to have been sung in the Great Mysteries, given in the Philosophumena (see p. [54], infra). Cf. Ramsay, Cities, etc., I. pp. 132, 263, 264, for other identifications. The Anatolian name of the Dea Syria to whose cult Nero was addicted, was Atargatis, which Prof. Garstang would derive from the Babylonian Ishtar (Strong, Syrian Goddess, 1913, p. vii); see Cumont, Les Religions Orientales dans le Paganisme Romain, Paris, 1906, p. 126. The whole of Cumont’s chapters on Syria and Asia Minor (op. cit. pp. 57-89) can be consulted with advantage. The American edition, 1911, contains some additional notes. See, too, Decharme’s article on Cybele in Daremberg and Saglio’s Dict. des Antiq.

[106]. Dill, Nero to Marcus Aurelius, pp. 548 sqq.

[107]. See n. 1, supra; Suetonius, Nero, c. LVI.

[108]. Dill, loc. cit., and authorities there quoted.

[109]. Cumont, Rel. Or. p. 77, and see index to American edition, 1911.

[110]. Ezekiel viii. 14.

[111]. Jeremiah vii. 18; lxiv. 17-19.

[112]. Ramsay, Cities, etc., II. p. 674, quoting Neubauer, Géographie du Talmud.

[113]. Cicero, pro Flacc. c. XXVIII. The Jews of the Dispersion in Egypt had temples of their own, in one at least of which Yahweh had for assessors a goddess Anat and a subordinate god Bethel. See René Dussaud, “Les Papyrus judéo-araméens d’Elephantiné,” R.H.R. t. LXIV. (1911) p. 350.

[114]. Acts xvi. 2, 3. See n. 3, p. [28], supra.

[115]. Layard, Nineveh and Babylon, 1853, pp. 509 sqq. Was this why Daniel was called “Master of the Magicians”? Dan. iv. 9; v. 11.

[116]. Thus, in a Coptic spell, the Words from the Cross: “Eli, eli, lama sabachthani,” are described as “the revered names of God.” See Rossi, “Trattato gnostico” in Mem. della Real. Accad. di Torino, Ser. B, XLII. fol. 9. So in mediaeval magic the word “Eieazareie” or “Escherie” is frequently used, apparently without any suspicion that it covers the אהיה אשר אהיה ’Ehyeh ’asher ’ehyeh—“I am that I am” of Exodus.

[117]. Hausrath, Hist. of New Testament Times, Eng. ed. 1878, I. pp. 126, 127, and authorities there quoted.

[118]. See last note. In the Acts, Bar-jesus or Elymas the sorcerer, the seven sons of Sceva, and some of those who burned their magical books at Ephesus, are said to be Jews. Harnack, Expansion of Christianity, Eng. ed. I. pp. 156, 157, says the Jews were known as exorcisers of demons throughout the Roman Empire.

[119]. Origen, cont. Cels. Bk IV. c. 33. Cf. ibid. c. 34, and Bk I. c. 22. Also Justin Martyr’s Dial. c. Tryph. c. LXXXV.

[120]. See Chapter III, vol. I. n. 6, p. 106, supra.

[121]. Karl Wessely, in Expositor, Series III, vol. IV. (1886), pp. 194 sqq., gives many specimens of these spells. The papyri from which they are taken are printed in full in his Griechische Zauberpapyrus von Paris und London, Wien, 1888, and his Neue Griechische Zauberpapyri, Wien, 1893. See also Parthey, Zwei griechische Zauberpapyri des Berliner Museums, Berlin, 1866; Leemans, Papyri Graeci Mus. Ant. Publ. Lugduni Batavi, t. II., Leyden, 1885, and Kenyon, Gk. Papyri in B.M. before quoted.

[122]. They sometimes speak of certain expressions being used by the ἀρχιερεῖς “high priests,” Leemans, op. cit. t. II. p. 29. Does this mean the adepts in magic or the heads of a sect?

[123]. Origen, cont. Cels. Bk. I. c. 24.

[124]. So Kuenen, Religion of Israel (Eng. ed.), III. p. 314, says that the existence of the Cabala is indicated in the Talmud.

[125]. See Chapter V, vol. I. pp. 169, 170, supra.

[126]. The Sumerian moon-god, Nannar, was denoted by the number 30, Marduk called 50 and so on. See King, Seven Tablets of Creation, 1902, I. p. 66.

[127]. See Chapter VII, supra.

[128]. Isidore Loeb, La Grande Encyclopédie, s.v. La Cabbale juive; ibid. F. Herman Krüger, s.v. Gnosticisme, and Franck, La Kabbale, Paris, 1843, p. 203, both notice the likeness between Gnosticism and the Cabala and say that they are derived from the same source.

[129]. See the Sumerian Hymn of Creation translated by Sayce, Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia (Gifford Lectures), Edinburgh, 1902, p. 380; Jastrow, Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, Boston, U.S.A. 1898, p. 490; King, Seven Tablets, p. 3; Rogers, Rel. of Bab., p. 108.

[130]. “Au commencement était le Nun, l’océan primordial, dans les profondeurs infinies duquel flottaient les germes des choses. De toute éternité Dieu s’engendra et s’enfanta lui-même au sein de cette masse liquide sans forme encore et sans usage.” Maspero, Hist. Ancienne des Peuples de l’Orient, p. 326.

[131]. Diogenes Laertius, Vit. Philosoph. Bk I. c. 6.

[132]. Including in that name some who attained to high office in the Catholic Church. Thus Hatch, H. L. p. 255, says with apparent truth that Clement of Alexandria “anticipated Plotinus in conceiving of God as being ‘beyond the One and higher than the Monad itself,’ which was the highest abstraction of current philosophy.” The passage he here relies on is in Clement’s Paedagogus, Bk I. c. 8. Hatch goes on to say, “There is no name that can properly be named of Him: ‘Neither the One nor the Good, nor Mind, nor Absolute Being, nor Father, nor Creator, nor Lord’”—expressions to be found in Clement’s Stromata, Bk V. c. 12. Clement’s orthodoxy may be called in question; but no fault has been found in that respect with Synesius, Bishop of Ptolemais and the friend of Hypatia. Yet in his Hymns he uses expressions which would have come naturally to the lips of any Ophite. Thus:

Σὺ δ’ ἄρρην, σὺ δὲ θῆλυς,

Σὺ δὲ φωνά, σὺ δὲ σιγά,

Φύσεως φύσις γονῶσα,

Σὺ δ’ ἄναξ, αἰῶνος αἰών,

Τὸ μέν, ᾗ θέμις βοᾶσαι;

“Male thou and female,

Voice thou and silence,

Nature engendered of Nature,

Thou King, Aeon of Aeons,

What is it lawful to call thee?”

and again

Πατέρων πάντων

Πάτερ, αὐτοπάτωρ,

Προπάτωρ, ἀπάτωρ,

Υἱὲ σεαυτοῦ....

Μύστας δὲ νόος

Τά τε καὶ τὰ λέγει,

Βυθὸν ἄρρητον

Ἀμφιχορεύων.

“Father of all Fathers,

Father of thyself,

Propator [Forefather] who hast no father,

O Son of thyself....

But the initiated mind

Says this and that,

Celebrating with dances

The Ineffable Bythos.“

(Hymn III)

The ineffability of divine names was an old idea in Egypt, especially in the Osirian religion, where it forms the base of the story of Ra and Isis. So the name of Osiris himself was said to be ineffable. See Eug. Lefébure in Sphinx, Stockholm, vol. I. pp. 99-102. The name of Marduk of Babylon is in the same way declared ineffable in an inscription of Neriglissar, Trans. Roy. Soc. Litt. 2nd series, vol. VIII. p. 276. The name of Yahweh became ineffable directly after Alexander. See Halévy, Revue des Études juives, t. ix. (1884), p. 172. In every case, the magical idea that the god might be compelled by utterance of his secret name seems to be at the root of the practice. Cf. Erman, Life in Ancient Egypt, Eng. ed. p. 354.

[133]. The whole account of Ophite doctrine as to the origin of things is here taken from Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 28, pp. 226 sqq., Harvey.

[134]. Genesis i. 8.

[135]. Philo explains that there is a vast difference between man as now made and the first man who was made according to the image of God, De opificio mundi, c. 46. This idea of an archetypal man was widely spread over Eastern Europe and Asia, and Bousset, Hauptprobleme der Gnosis, Göttingen, 1907, Kap. IV., “Der Urmensch,” has collected all or nearly all the references to it in the literature of the period that could be produced up to that date. As to its origin, the issue is still very doubtful. While we should naturally expect to find it in the Babylonian legends, the Tablets of Creation contain no certain allusion to it, while it is certainly to be traced in the Zend Avesta and its related books. Until we are able to compare the dates of these two sources it seems idle to speculate as to which is the original one and which the derived. But see Introduction (pp. lxi-lxiii and note on last page quoted) supra.

[136]. This is a less primitive and therefore probably later way of accounting for the birth of one spiritual or superhuman being from another, than that of Simon Magus who made his Supreme Being androgyne.

[137]. Theocritus, Idyll, II. l. 34. For the identity of Hades and Dionysos see Chapter II. vol. I. supra.

[138]. Pausanias, Descpt. Graec. Bk VIII. cc. 17, 20; Arnobius, adv. Gentes, Bk V. cc. 5, 7. Cf. Decharme in Daremberg and Saglio’s Dict. des Antiq. s.v. Cybele.

[139]. See Chapter II. vol. I. supra.

[140]. Clem. Alex. Protrept. c. II.; Arnobius, op. cit. Bk VI. c. 21, calls it “the well-known senarian verse of a poet of Tarentum,” and connects it with the Sabazian rites, whence it probably found its way to Eleusis.

[141]. This relegation of the really Supreme God to an unregarded place in the pantheon is common enough in the history of religions. Thus the Shilluks of the Upper Nile take little notice of their great god Jôk, to whom they only sacrifice once a year, reserving all the rest of their worship for a being intermediate between God and man called Nyakang. See Gleichen, The Anglo-Egyptian Soudan, vol. I. pp. 162, 197, and R.H.R. 1911, Juillet-Août.

[142]. See n. 1, p. [31], supra. The Dea Syria was otherwise called Atargatis, of which Derketo was, teste Prof. Garstang, a homonym. See Strong, The Syrian Goddess, p. 52 and n. 25.

[143]. See n. 1, p. [31], supra.

[144]. Ramsay, Cities, etc., I. p. 9.

[145]. Irenaeus, op. cit. Bk I. c. 28, p. 227, Harvey.

[146]. ἀρσενόθηλυς, Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk V. c. 1, p. 139, Cruice.

[147]. See next note.

[148]. Ἀπὸ σοῦ πατὴρ καὶ διά σε μήτηρ, τὰ δύο ἀθάνατα ὀνόματα, Αἰώνων γονεῖς, πολῖτα οὐρανοῦ, μεγαλώνυμε ἄνθρωπε, Ηiρροlytus, op. cit. Bk V. c. 1, p. 140, Cruice. Salmon points out that almost the same words occur in Hippolytus’ account of the heresy of Monoimus the Arab, where he describes the monad as being among other things: Αὕτη μήτηρ, αὕτη πατήρ, τὰ δύο ἀθάνατα ὀνόματα, op. cit. Bk VIII. c. 12, p. 410, Cruice. He is inclined to attribute this to the real or supposed fact that both the Naassenes and Monoimus borrowed from the Apophasis of Simon. See Salmon in Dict. Christian Biog. s.v. Monoimus.

[149]. Τὸ δὲ πνεῦμα ἐκεῖ [ἐστιν] ὅπου καὶ ὁ Πατὴρ ὀνομάζεται καὶ ὁ Υἱός, ἐκ τούτου [καὶ ἐκ] τοῦ Πατρὸς ἐκεῖ γεννώμενον; κ.τ.λ., Ηippolytus, op. cit. Βk V. c. 9, pp. 174, 185, Cruice. The words in brackets are Cruice’s emendation. Duncker and Schneidewin omit them and read γεννώμενος for γεννώμενον. Giraud, op. cit. pp. 92, 93, agrees with Cruice’s reading, and points out that both the Spirit and the Son are here put forward as the masculine and feminine forms respectively of the great Adamas. It is evident, however, that among the earlier Ophites represented by Irenaeus’ Greek text, the Spirit or First Woman was thought to come into being after the First Man and the Son of Man. See Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 28, p. 227, Harvey.

[150]. Thus after saying that “he who says all things are composed (συνεστάναι) from one (substance) errs, but that he who says they are framed from three speaks the truth,” he goes on to say Mία γάρ ἐστι φησιν, ἡ μακαρία φύσις τοῦ μακαρίou ἄνθρωπου τοῦ ἄνω, τοῦ Ἀδάμαντος· μία δὲ ἡ θνητὴ κάτω· μία δὲ ἡ ἀβασίλευτος γενεὰ ἡ ἄνω γενομένη, κ.τ.λ., “For one is the blessed nature of the blessed Man above, viz.: Adamas, and one is the nature below which is subject to death, and one is the kingless race which is begotten above,” etc. Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk V. c. 8, p. 157, Cruice.

[151]. Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk V. c. 1, p. 140, Cruice.

[152]. ὰποκατάστασις (see p. [57] infra). As Salmon has shown with great clearness, this, rather than the redemption of individual souls, is the aim of all post-Christian Gnostic systems, Dict. Christian Biog. s.v. Gnosticism.

[153]. Philo, de Sacrificantibus, c. 13; II. p. 261, Mangey.

[154]. Acts xiv. 11-18.

[155]. Postea, dicunt, exultante primo homine cum filio suo super formositate Spiritus, hoc est foeminae, et illuminante eam, generavit ex ea lumen incorruptibile, tertium masculum, quem Christum vocant. So the Latin version of Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 28, p. 227, Harvey. The Greek text, which should contain Irenaeus’ own words, only says: Ἐρασθῆναι δέ φασι τὸν πρῶτον Ἄνθρωπον, καὶ τὸν δεύτερον, τῆς ὥpas τoῦ Πveύμaτoς ... καὶ παιδοποιῆσαι φῶς ... ὁ καλοῦσι Χριστόν. Something, however, has evidently been expunged from the earlier version of the story, and it is possible that the later interpolation is due to the desire of the translator to make the teaching of the heretics as repulsive as possible. Theodoret merely copies the Latin text of Irenaeus.

[156]. εἰς τὸν ἄφθαρτον ἀνασπασθῆναι Αἰῶνα, ἣν καὶ ἀληθινὴν ἐκκλησίαν καλοῦσι. Irenaeus, loc. cit. p. 228, Harvey.

[157]. This Divine Family or Council must have been an old idea in post-exilic Judaism. Justin Martyr, Dial. c. Tryph. c. 126, says that Christ is called the “Angel of the Great Council” by Ezekiel, but the expression is not to be found in the A.V. Origen, cont. Cels. Bk V. c. 53, also speaks of a prophecy in which Jesus was described as the “Angel of the Great Council, because he announced to men the great counsel of God”—a pun which curiously enough is the same in Greek as in English. The Jews of Elephantine worshipped in their temple a god and a goddess who were looked upon as the assessors, if the inferiors, of Yahweh (see n. 4, p. [32], supra). In the Talmud, it is said that God has an upper or celestial familia or tribunal without consulting which he does nothing, and which is indicated by the “holy ones” of Dan. iv. 17. See Taylor, Pirke-Aboth, Cambridge, 1877, II. p. 43, n. 7. The expression “Angel of the Great Council” recurs in the Gnostic epitaph from the Via Latina given later (Chapter IX).

[158]. Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 28, pp. 227, 228, Harvey.

[159]. Giraud, op. cit. p. 95, thinks that in the Naassene teaching matter does not really exist, all things being contained in Adamas. The absolute antagonism of God and matter is, however, too strongly marked a feature of nearly all the sources from which the Ophites can have drawn their doctrine for his theory to be entertained. Berger, Études des Documents nouveaux fournis sur les Ophites par les Philosophumena, Nancy, 1873, p. 25, puts forward the same idea as a mere figure of speech and in order apparently to reconcile the Ophite doctrine with St John’s statement that without the Word “nothing” was made. Later he (ibid. pp. 61, 104, 105) points out that the tendency of the Ophite like all other Gnostic doctrine is to widen rather than to narrow the abyss between Spirit and Matter.

[160]. This is a variant, and an important one, of the Babylonian myth which makes Bel, after defeating Tiamat the Dragon of Chaos, cut her in two halves and make out of them the visible heaven and earth. See Rogers, op. cit. p. 126. The heaven which there is fashioned from the powers of evil, is here at any rate half divine. In later systems, such as one of those in the Pistis Sophia and especially that of the Manichaeans, the older Babylonian idea is returned to. It would therefore seem that for the modification here introduced, the Ophites were indebted to Jewish influence and forced it to agree with the story of Genesis. See Irenaeus, op. cit. Bk I. c. 28, p. 229, Harvey.

[161]. Irenaeus, loc. cit. p. 228, Harvey. This is the first unmistakable allusion to the figure of the Sophia which is so prominent in most of the Gnostic systems and reappears in Manichaeism. There can, I think, be no doubt that she is in effect the Great Goddess worshipped throughout Western Asia, who appears under different names in Lydia, Phrygia, Syria, Ionia, Crete, and Greece, and who is to be identified on etymological grounds, if Prof. Garstang (n. 1, p. [31], supra) is correct, with the Babylonian Ishtar. That the Alexandrians saw her in their goddess Isis has already been shown in Chap. II. Her most prominent characteristics show her to be a personification of the Earth, the mother of all living, ever bringing forth and ever a virgin, as is shown in the “Goddesses Twain,” Demeter and Cora. The dove was throughout Asia her symbol and perhaps her totem animal (Strong, The Syrian Goddess, pp. 22-24 for authority), as the serpent was that of her spouse or male counterpart (Justin Martyr, First Apol. c. XXVII.; Clem. Alex. Protrept. c. II.). In the Orphic cosmogonies she appears under her name of Gaia or Ge as the “first bride” (Abel’s Orphica, fr. 91) spouse of Uranos, as well as under all her subsequent personifications. She seems, too, to bear much analogy with the Persian Amshaspand, Spenta Armaiti, who is also identified with the earth, and is called Sophia or Wisdom (Tiele, Religion of the Iranian Peoples, Eng. ed. Bombay, 1912, pp. 130, 131). Whether the Persians also drew this conception from the Babylonian Ishtar is a question which some years ago might have been answered in the affirmative. Now, however, it has been complicated by the identification of this Spenta Armaiti with the Aramati of the Vedas—for which see M. Carnoy’s article Aramati-Armatay in Le Muséon, Louvain, vol. XIII. (1912), pp. 127-146—and the discovery of Winckler that the Vedic gods were worshipped in Asia Minor before 1272 B.C. Her appearance in the cosmology of the Gnostics under the name of Sophia is, however, probably due to the necessity of effecting by hook or by crook a harmony between Gentile and Jewish ideas, and is doubtless due in the first instance to the passage in the Book of Proverbs VIII., IX., where Wisdom חָכְמָה or Ἀχαμώθ (in both languages feminine) is described as existing from the beginning and the daily delight of Yahweh, rejoicing always before him and his instrument in making the universe (Clem. Hom. XVI. c. 12). It is said that Simon Magus called his mistress Helena by the name of Sophia, but the story only occurs in Victorinus of Pettau and is probably due to a confusion with the Sophia of later sects like that of Valentinus. In all these, with the single exception of that of Marcion, she plays a predominant part in the destiny of mankind.

[162]. This appears in the Latin version of Irenaeus only.

[163]. Ὑφ’ ἑκάστου δὲ τούτων ἕνα οὐρανὸν δημιουργηθῆναι, καὶ ἕκαστον οἰκεῖν τὸν οἰκεῖον. Irenaeus, op. cit. Bk I. c. 28, p. 230, Harvey.

[164]. Origen, cont. Cels. Bk VI. c. 32. This Ialdabaoth or Jaldabaoth appears in the systems or heresies of the Nicolaitans and of those whom Epiphanius calls “Gnostics” par excellence. See Epiphanius, op. cit. Bk I. t. ii., Haer. 25, p. 160, and Haer. 26, p. 184. Theodoret, Haer. Fab. Bk V. c. 9, makes him belong also to the system of the Sethians. In all these he is the son of Sophia and presides over one or more of the super-terrestrial heavens, although the particular place assigned to him differs in the different sects. In the Pistis Sophia he is described (in the story of Pistis Sophia proper) as a power “half flame and half darkness” (cf. Ezekiel viii. 2) projected by one of the “triple-powered” gods of our universe and sent down into Chaos for the destruction of the heroine; in one of the later documents of the book we see him as lord of a particular portion of Chaos, where he presides over the punishment of a certain class of sinning souls. His name offers many difficulties. Gieseler reads it ילדא בהות, “son of Chaos,” and this Salmon, Dict. Christian Biog. s.h.v., considers the most probable derivation, although Harvey’s reading of יה־אל־דאבהות “Lord (or Jah) God of the Fathers,” is certainly more appropriate. In the great Magic Papyrus of Paris, the name appears as ⲁⲗⲑⲁⲂⲱⲧ, which can hardly be anything else that Aldabôt or Adabôt, since we have ⲁⲗⲑⲱⲛⲁⲓ for Adonai in the next line (Griffith, The Old Coptic magical texts of Paris, p. 3; extract from the Zeitschrift für Ägyptische Sprache, Bd. XXXVIII.). In Papyrus XLVI. of the British Museum (Kenyon, Gk. Pap. p. 69), we find βαλβναβαωθ, probably a clerical error for Jaldabaoth, which is again followed as before by the name Αδωναι. In the Leyden Papyrus which calls itself the “8th Book of Moses,” we have a god invoked as Aldabeim, which is there said to be an Egyptian name, and to be the φυσικὸν ὄνομα “natural name” of the sun and the boat in which he rises when he dawns upon the world (Leemans, op. cit. pp. 87, 119, 127). It is not at all certain, however, which of these is the right spelling, for the German editors of Hippolytus read in one place Esaldaios for Ialdabaoth, and the Magic Papyrus last quoted has a name Aldazaô which is said to be quoted from a book of Moses called Archangelicus (Leemans, op. cit. p. 157). The name Ialdazaô (“El Shaddai”?) is used as that of the “God of Gods” in the great Magic Papyrus of Paris, with whose name that of the aeon Sophia is mentioned (Wessely, Griech. Zauberpap. p. 50). The most probable conclusion is that Jaldabaoth represents some name or epithet of God current among the Semitic Babylonians which had fallen into disuse and had been much corrupted by being turned into and out of demotic. So Revillout (Revue Égyptologique) gives an instance where the invocation ἐπίσχες ἐπί με “Come unto me!” by a like process became transmogrified into “episkhesepimme” without being recognized by the scribe as Greek.

[165]. εἰδικὸς κόσμος, Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk V. c. 7, p. 153, Cruice. By the expression Demiurge he means that he fashioned it from pre-existent matter, as a workman builds a house.

[166]. Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 28, p. 230, Harvey.

[167]. Thus Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 18, p. 198, Harvey, in summarizing the teaching of Saturninus says that the god of the Jews was one of the (world-creating) angels. That Saturninus’ opinion was derived from or coincided with that of the Ophites, see Salmon, Dict. Christian Biog. s.v. Saturninus. Hippolytus Naassene also calls Jaldabaoth “a fiery god” and “a fourth number,” op. cit. Bk V. c. 7, p. 153, Cruice, in allusion to the text about God being a consuming fire and to his Tetragrammaton or four-lettered name. Epiphanius, Haer. XXXVII. c. 4, p. 500, Oehler, says Κaὶ οὗτός ἐστι, φασίν, ὁ θεὸς τῶν Ἰουδαίων ὁ Ἰαλδαβαώθ, “And this Ialdabaoth is, they [the Ophites] say, the God of the Jews.”

[168]. Origen, cont. Cels. Bk VI. c. 32.

[169]. Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk IV. c. 11.

[170]. See the picture by Faucher Gudin of the universe according to the Babylonians in Maspero, Hist. Ancienne des Peuples de l’ Orient Classique, Paris, 1895, t. I. p. 543.

[171]. Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 28, pp. 231, 232, Harvey. A sort of echo or perhaps a more detailed repetition of the story is found in one of the latest documents of the Pistis Sophia, where Jesus tells His disciples that the ἀρχοντες or rulers of Adamas once rebelled and persisted in begetting “archons and archangels and angels and serving spirits and decans”; that the 12 aeons, who are evidently the Signs of the Zodiac, divided into two companies of six, half of them under the rule of one Jabraôth repenting and being translated into a higher sphere, while the others were “bound” in our firmament under the rule of the five planets. Perhaps the origin of the whole story is the battle of the Gods and the serpent-footed giants, which appears on the Mithraic bas-reliefs, for which see P.S.B.A. 1912, p. 134, and Pl. XVI, 7. It is certainly of Asiatic or Anatolian origin, and seems to be connected with volcanic phenomena. Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk V. c. 13, p. 192, Cruice, says this rebellion is a “Chaldaean” doctrine.

[172]. τὸν δὲ ἀθυμήσαντα, εἰς τὴν τρύγα τῆς ὕλης ἐρεῖσθαι τὴν ἔννοιαν, καὶ γεννῆσαι υἱὸν ὀφιόμορφον ἐξ αὐτῆς, “and [they say that] he being enraged, beheld his thought in the dregs of matter, and a serpent-formed son was born from it,” Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 28, p. 232, Harvey. Perhaps this explains how the Ennoia or Thought of God was supposed to take definite shape. Other editors wish to read ἐρείδεσθαι “fixed” for ἐρεῖσθαι.

[173]. Hippolytus, Bk V. c. 9, p. 178, Cruice.

[174]. See n. 1, p. [45], supra. So Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk V. c. 9, p. 178, Cruice, when speaking of the Ophites frequenting the mysteries of the Magna Mater, says that there is no temple anywhere [he means in Phrygia] without a serpent. See Ramsay, Cities, etc., I. pp. 51, 87. As King, Gnostics and their Remains, p. 225, noted, all the principal cities of Asia Minor, Ephesus, Apamea and Pergamum depicted serpents on their coins. For the story of Alexander’s birth, see Budge, Alexander the Great (Pseudo-Callisthenes), p. 8.

[175]. See Ramsay in last note.

[176]. Acta Philippi (ed. Tischendorf), passim.

[177]. dehinc et Spiritum, et animam et omnia mundialia; inde generatum omnem oblivionem, et malitiam, et zelum, et invidiam, et mortem. Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 28, p. 232, Harvey. So Dionysos, whose emblem (Clem. Alex. Protrept. c. II.) was the serpent, is identified with the soul of the world. Cf. Berger, Études sur la Philosophumena, Nancy, 1873, pp. 39 sqq.

[178]. Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk V. c. 9, p. 178, Cruice.

[179]. Ibid. Bk V. c. 7, pp. 144, 145, Cruice.

[180]. Is this the origin of the ideas on the Macrocosm and the Microcosm? See [Chapter XIII], infra.

[181]. See n. 3, p. [41], supra.

[182]. Cf. Charles, Book of the Secrets of Enoch, pp. 7, 57.

[183]. Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 28, p. 232, Harvey.

[184]. It is curious that she did not also mention herself or the First Woman.

[185]. This is the story of the earliest or Greek text; the Latin says that he said it to divert the minds of his rebellious sons.

[186]. Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 28, pp. 232-234, Harvey. This Adam is of course not to be confused with Adamas. Neither did he resemble the Adam of Genesis, for he is described as being immensum latitudine et longitudine. Harvey, ubi cit., gives many parallels to this from the Talmud and Cabala, which must be either taken directly from the Ophite author or borrowed from a common source. For Eve’s creation, see n. 2, p. [58], supra.

[187]. Cf. the vestures of light belonging to Jesus in the Pistis Sophia, Chapter X, infra. So Philo, Quaest. et Sol. in Gen. c. 53, explains that the coats of skin made by God for Adam and Eve are a “figure of speech” for a material body. Origen, in like manner (cont. Cels. Bk IV. c. 40), says that the clothing of the protoplasts in tunics of skin covers “a certain secret and mystic doctrine far exceeding Plato’s of the soul losing its wings and being borne to earth.”

[188]. Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 28, pp. 234-236, Harvey. The idea of the seven evil demons is a very old one in the East. See the Babylonian story of the assault of the seven evil spirits on the Moon. Sayce, Gifford Lectures, 1902, p. 430, in which those who like to rationalize ancient myths can see a lunar eclipse. We meet again with Sammael and Michael as names of one of them in the diagram to be described later.

[189]. Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 28, p. 237, Harvey.

[190]. The LXX or Greek version of the Old Testament belongs to the Western Diaspora rather than to the Eastern. Perhaps this was why Paul and Barnabas in addressing the Phrygians were careful to give them a summary of Old Testament history. See Acts xiii. 16 sqq.

[191]. The Sethians had a book called the Paraphrase of Seth now lost, which from its name may easily have been a heretical version of the Book of Genesis. See Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk V. c. 21, p. 223, Cruice.

[192]. Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk V. c. 7, p. 145, Cruice, says that this was first taught by the “Assyrians,” by which he evidently means the Syrians.

[193]. πλάσμα τὸ πήλινον, Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk V. c. 7, p. 153, Cruice.

[194]. This is certainly the opinion of the sect responsible for one of the later documents of the Pistis Sophia. See Pistis Sophia, pp. 346, 347, Copt. So Rossi’s Trattato gnostico, before quoted, speaks throughout of Satan or the chief of the powers of evil as the ἀρχηπλασμα “originator of the form”?

[195]. Hippolytus, see n. 1, supra.

[196]. Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk V. c. 7, p. 144, Cruice.

[197]. Ibid. Bk V. c. 8, pp. 157-173, Cruice.

[198]. A verse:

Son of Saturn, son of Jove

Or born of mighty Rhea’s love.

Holy name, that sounds so dear

To that ancient Rhea’s ear.

Thee the old Assyrians [read Syrians] all

The thrice-wept Adonis call.

To thee for name has Egypt given

The holy horned moon of heaven [Osiris].

Thou the serpent-god of Greece

The all reverenced Adam thou of Samothrace.

Thee the Lydians, Phrygians thee,

Invoke, the Corybantic deity.

Thee Pappas now and now the dead,

Now lifting up reborn the god-like head.

Unfruitful now or barren desert brown,

Now the rich golden harvest mowing down.

Or whom the blossoming almond-tree

Brought forth on the free hills the piper wild to be.

Attis, old Rhea’s son I sing

Not with the wild bell’s clashing ring

Nor Ida’s fife, in whose shrill noise

The old Curetae still rejoice;

But with the mingling descant sweet

Of Phoebus’ harp, so soft, so sweet,

Evan! Evan! Pan, I call!

Evan the wild Bacchanal:

Or that bright Shepherd that on high

Folds the white stars up in the silent sky.

Quarterly Review, June, 1851.

[199]. πάνυ yὰp πικρῶς καὶ πεφυλαγμένως παραγγέλλουσιν ἀπέχεσθαι ὡς ἀποκεκομμένοι τῆς πρὸς γυναῖκα ὁμιλίας. “For they very strictly enjoin that their followers should abstain, as if they were castrated, from companying with women,” Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk V. c. 9, p. 177, Cruice.

[200]. Τουτέστι, φησίν, οὐδεὶς τούτων τῶν μυστηρίων ἀκροατὴς γέγονεν εἰ μὴ μόνοι οἱ γνωστικοὶ τελειοι. “This he (the Naassene writer) says signifies that none was a hearer of these mysteries save only the perfect Gnostics,” Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk V. c. 8, p. 144, Cruice. The “this” refers to the text: “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.”

[201]. ἐκ τῶν σωμάτων τῶν χοϊκῶν ἀναγεννηθέντες πνευματικοὶ οὐ σαρκικοί “being born again from the earthly body, not as fleshly but as spiritual men”.... Οἱ δὲ αὐτοί, φησί, Φρύγες τὸν αὐτὸν πάλιν ἐκ μεταβολῆς λέγουσι θεόν. “Fοr the Phrygians themselves declare, he says, that he who is thus reborn is by reason of the change a god,” Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk V. c. 8, pp. 165, 166, Cruice. Cf. Berger, Études, etc. p. 27.

[202]. τῶν ἐπουρανίων καὶ ἐπιγείων καὶ καταχθονίων.

[203]. τὴν ἀσυμφωνίαν τοῦ κόσμον.

[204]. Hippolytus, op. et loc. cit. p. 165, Cruice.

[205]. The Naassene writer says that the peace preached “to those that are afar off” of Ephesians ii. 17, refers to τοῖς ὑλικοῖς καὶ χοϊκοῖς “to the material and earthly,” and that “to those that are near” to τοῖς πνευματικοῖς καὶ νοεροῖς τελείοις ἀνθρώποις “to the spiritual and understanding perfect men.” Hippolytus, op. et loc. cit.

[206]. Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk V. c. 8, pp. 172, 173, Cruice.

[207]. Cum accepisset concupiscentiam superioris luminis, et virtutem sumpsisset per omnia, deposuisse corpus et liberatam ab eo. Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 28, p. 229, Harvey. As he goes on to say: Corpus autem hoc exuisse dicunt eam, foeminam a foemina nominant, it is plain that he is here referring to the Third or Lower Sophia who was one of the personages in the Valentinian drama and unknown, so far as we can tell, to the Ophites. The Latin translator is no doubt responsible for this confusion.

[208]. That this was the object of Ialdabaoth in creating Eve is plain from Irenaeus’ Latin text (Bk I. c. 28, p. 233, Harvey): Zelantem autem Ialdabaoth voluisse excogitare evacuare hominem per foeminam, et de sua Enthymesi eduxisse foeminam, quam illa Prunicos suscipiens invisibiliter evacuavit a virtute. He then goes on to relate the seduction of the archons which plays so large a part in the Enochian literature, and which is made Sophia’s contrivance for nullifying the command to “Increase and multiply” in Genesis.

[209]. τὰ μικρὰ μυστήρια τὰ τῆς σαρκικῆς γενέσεως: Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk V. c. 8, p. 172, Cruice.

[210]. Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk V. c. 9, p. 177, Cruice.

[211]. Ibid. Bk V. c. 6, p. 140, Cruice.

[212]. Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 28, § 6, p. 238, Harvey. The section is given almost word for word as in Irenaeus; but it is manifestly taken from some other source than that of the Greek text, and is inconsistent with the rest of the story. If the Lower Sophia or Prunicos (the Substitute) were born from the mere boiling over of the light shed upon her mother, of what had she to “repent”? In the Pistis Sophia, indeed, the heroine wins her way back to her former estate by repentance, but her fall has been occasioned by disobedience and ambition. So, too, the story about Jesus changing His form on His descent through the seven heavens is common to the story of Pistis Sophia and the legend of Simon Magus, which two it therefore connects (see Chapter VI, vol. I. p. 191, n. 4). It also appears in the Ascension of Isaiah which Mr Charles thinks may be dated about 150 A.D. (see Charles, Ascension of Isaiah, 1900, pp. xi and 62), but which is probably of much later date. There are other features to be noted in their place common to the Pistis Sophia and the last named work.

[213]. That is to say, that which does not perish and return to the Deity.

[214]. Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 28, § 7, pp. 238-241, Harvey. This again is given almost verbatim. The stay of Jesus on earth after His Resurrection, and His teaching His disciples “quod liquidum est,” that is, without parable, is also told in the Pistis Sophia, but His post-Resurrection life is there put at 12 years. Irenaeus’ Latin translator has, as has been said, evidently here got hold of some later developments of Ophitism not known to his author at the time that the Greek text was written. Yet some tradition of a long interval between the Resurrection and the Ascension was evidently current in the sub-Apostolic age. Irenaeus himself says on the authority of “those who met with John the Disciple of the Lord in Asia” that Jesus’ ministry only lasted for one year from His Baptism, He being then 30 years old, and that He suffered on completing his 30th year; yet that He taught until He was 40 or 50 years old. See Irenaeus, Bk II. c. 33, § 3, p. 331, Harvey. Some part of this statement appears in the Greek text.

[215]. Epiphanius, Haer. XXXVII. c. 5, p. 502, Oehler. Epiphanius, although generally untrustworthy, had been, as M. de Faye reminds us, a Nicolaitan in his youth. See de Faye, Introd. p. 116.

[216]. Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk V. c. 10, pp. 182-184, Cruice.

[217]. Cruice, op. et loc. cit. p. 152, n. 3, remarks that the Supreme Triad here shown is τὸ νοερόν, τὸ χοϊκόν, τὸ ψυχικόν “the intellectual, the earthly, and the psychic or animal.” This may be; but there is no proof that the Ophites ever gave Chaos or unformed Matter a place in it, or made it the next principle to their Supreme Being. Probably for the supposed “Chaos” in the second line of the Psalm should be substituted some words like “the projected Thought” of the Father. Miller has some curious remarks quoted in the same note on the metre of the Psalm, which he points out is the same as in a poem of Lucian’s, and in the hymns of Synesius, Bishop of Ptolemais, already mentioned.

[218]. Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk V. c. 7, p. 148; ibid. c. 9, p. 181, Cruice. They probably resembled the ceremonies described at length in the Pistis Sophia and the Bruce Papyrus. See [Chapter X], infra.

[219]. See p. [18] supra.

[220]. Giraud, op. cit. p. 95.

[221]. Sanctam autem hebdomadam septem stellas, quas dicunt planetas, esse volunt. Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 28, § 5, p. 236, Harvey.

[222]. Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk V. c. 8, p. 159, Cruice, says that the “nothing” said in John i. 3, 4 to have been made without the Word is in fact this world. Τὸ δὲ “οὐδέν, ὃ χωρὶς αὐτοῦ γέγονεν, ὁ κόσμος ἰδικός ἐστιν · γέγονεν γὰρ χωρὶς αὐτοῦ ὑπὸ τρίτου καὶ τετάρτον.” “But the ‘nothing’ which came into being without Him is the world of form; for it came into being without Him by the Third and Fourth”—these last being evidently Sophia and Jaldabaoth respectively.

[223]. Οὐ δύναται οὖν, φησι, σωθῆναι ὁ τέλειος ἄνθρωπος, ἐὰν μὴ ἀναγεννηθῇ διὰ ταύτης εἰσελθὼν τῆς πύλης. “The perfect [or initiated] man, he says, therefore cannot be saved unless he be born again, entering in through this gate.” Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk V. c. 8, p. 165, Cruice.

[224]. Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk V. c. 7, p. 144, Cruice.

[225]. Clem. Alex. Strom. Bk III. c. 13, and n. 2, p. 196, Chapter VI, vol. I. The οὔτε ἄρρεν οὔτε θῆλυ of this passage and of Clement’s Second Epistle to the Romans (Hilgenfeld, N.T. extra canon. pt I., p. 79) is compared by the Naassene author (Hipp. op. cit. Bk V. c. 7, p. 146, Cruice) with the emasculation of Attis, which is made a type of the soul “passing from the material parts of the lower creation to the eternal substance above.”

[226]. The Naassenes had priests. Οἱ οὖν ἱερεῖς καὶ προστάται τοῦ δόγματος γεγένηνται πρῶτοι οἱ ἐπικληθέντες Ναασσηνοί. “The priests and chiefs of the doctrine have been the first who were called Naassenes.” Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk V. c. 6, p. 139, Cruice. Cf. also p. [77], infra.

[227]. As we have seen, Aelius Aristides says the devotees of the Alexandrian gods used to bury holy books in their tombs. See Chapter II, vol. I. p. [60], supra.

[228]. See Chapter IV, supra.

[229]. I have taken the earliest date for which there is any probability, because it was in Hadrian’s time that most of the great Gnostics taught, and their speculations would therefore have been most likely to come to heathen ears. Keim, Celsus Wahres Wort, Zürich, 1873, however, makes the date of the book 177-178 A.D., and this seems supported by the latest critics. See Patrick, Apology of Origen, 1892, p. 9, where the question is thoroughly examined.

[230]. Origen, cont. Cels. Bk VI. c. 24.

[231]. See Matter, Histoire du Gnosticisme, Paris, 1843, Pl. III, and Giraud, op. cit. Pl. facing p. 238.

[232]. Origen, cont. Cels. Bk VI. c. 38. The fact is significant as showing that the Ophites considered the Son as contained within the Father.

[233]. ἐπιγεγραμμένον διάφραγμα πελεκοιειδεῖ σχήματι, Origen, op. et loc. cit. The πέλεκυς or double-bladed axe was the symbol of Zeus Labrandos of Caria, and is often met with on the coins of Asia Minor, while it seems to have played a prominent part in the worship of Minoan Crete and in Mycenae. See Arthur Evans, Mycenaean Tree and Pillar Cult, 1901, pp. 8-12. Ramsay, Cities, etc., I. c. 91, thinks that Savazos or Sabazios was called in Phrygia Lairbenos, which may be connected with the word Labrys said to be the name of the double axe. He found a god with this weapon worshipped together with Demeter or Cybele in the Milyan country, op. cit. pp. 263, 264, and he thinks the pair appear under the different names of Leto, Artemis, Cybele, and Demeter on the one hand, and Apollo, Lairbenos, Sabazios, Men, and Attis on the other throughout Asia Minor. He points out, however, that they were only the male and female aspects of a single divinity (op. cit. 93, 94). Is it possible that this is the explanation of the double axe as a divine symbol? The axe with one blade was the ordinary Egyptian word-sign for a god (see P.S.B.A. 1899, pp. 310, 311) and the double axe might easily mean a god with a double nature. If this idea were at all prevalent in Anatolia at the beginning of our era, it would explain Simon Magus’ mysterious allusion to the flaming sword of Genesis iii. 24, “which turns both ways to guard the Tree of Life,” and is somehow connected with the division of mankind into sexes. See Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk VI. c. 17, p. 260, Cruice. A very obscure Coptic text which its discoverer, M. de Mély, calls “Le Livre des Cyranides” (C. R. de l’Acad. des Inscriptions, Mai-Juin, 1904, p. 340) gives a hymn to the vine said to be sung in the Mysteries of Bacchus in which the “mystery of the axe” is mentioned.

[234]. Origen, op. et loc. cit. The names of the circles, etc., in the original are from above downwards: Ἀγάπη, Ζωή, Πρόνοια, Σοφίας, Γνῶσις, Σοφία, Φύσις, and Σύνεσις.

[235]. Gnosis does appear in the Naassene Psalm given in this Chapter, but only as the name of the “Holy Way.”

[236]. See n. 1, p. [58] supra.

[237]. In this it is following strictly the tradition of the Enochian literature. “And we ascended to the firmament, I and he, and there I saw Sammael and his hosts, and there was great fighting therein and the angels of Satan were envying one another.” Charles, Ascension of Isaiah, c. VII. v. 9, p. 48, and Editor’s notes for other references.

[238]. Origen, cont. Cels. Bk VI. c. 32. Horaios is probably connected with the root אור “light”; Astaphaios appears in the earliest texts as Astanpheus. which may be an anagram for στέφανος “crown.” Or it may be חשטפה “inundation” which would agree with Origen’s statement as to this being the principle of water, for which see p. [73] infra.

[239]. Op. cit. Bk VI. c. 31.

[240]. Unless we take the ten circles as including the three gates of Horaios, Ailoaios, and Astaphaios. In this case, Jaldabaoth and his first three sons would alone form the higher part of the planetary world. This is unlikely, but if it were so, there would be an additional reason for calling Jaldabaoth, as does Irenaeus, a “fourth number.” Theodore Bar Khôni, who wrote in the viiith century (see [Chapter XIII], infra), in his notice of the Ophites gives the number of these heavens as ten. See Pognon, Coupes de Khouabir, Paris, 1898, p. 213.

[241]. ἐπὶ τοῦ κύκλου καὶ τοῦ κέντρου αὐτοῦ κατέγραψε, Origen, οp. cit. Bk VI. c. 25.

[242]. Origen says, loc. cit., that Leviathan is Hebrew for “Dragon.” Cf. Ps. civ. 26.

[243]. That is to say: Jaldabaoth; Iao, which is probably one of the many attempts to represent in Greek the Tetragrammaton יהוה called in English Jehovah; Ailoaios or Eloaios, the singular of the well-known plural name of God in Genesis אלהים “Elohim”; and Adonai, אדני, “the Lord,” which in many parts of the O.T. replaces the Tetragrammaton. Harvey, however, op. cit. p. 33, n. 3, thinks Iao may simply represent the initial of the name of Yahweh coupled with Alpha and Omega to show His eternal nature. He connects this with “I am the first and the last” of Isaiah xliv. 6, and Rev. i. 11. Yet the later Greeks called Dionysos Iao. See the (probably spurious) oracle of Apollo Clarius quoted by Macrobius, Saturnalia, Bk I. c. 18, II. 19 sqq.

[244]. Giraud, op. cit. p. 230.

[245]. πύλας ἀρχόντων αἰῶνι δεδεμένας: Origen, cont. Cels. Bk VI. c. 31. Perhaps we should read διδομένας, “Gates which belong to the age of the Archons,” i.e. while their rule lasts.

[246]. See the quotation from the Gospel of Philip later in this chapter, p. [79], infra.

[247]. This appears to be the sphere of the Sun to which the epithet μονότροπον “one-formed” is not inappropriate. Why he should be called δεσμὸν ἀβλεψίας “bond of blindness,” and λήθην ἀπερίσκεπτον “thoughtless oblivion,” does not appear. πρώτην δύναμιν πνεύματι προνοίας καὶ σοφίᾳ τηρουμένην “the first power preserved,” etc. coincides curiously with what is said in the Pistis Sophia as to the Ship of the Sun and the “Virgin of Light.”

[248]. This seems to be the sphere of Saturn, the furthest or 7th reckoning from the earth and therefore according to the astronomy of the time the nearest to the upper heavens. Was the symbol of life the Egyptian ♀ or ankh? It was of course the jealous Jaldabaoth’s or Ialdabaoth’s wish that no human souls should penetrate beyond his realm.

[249]. So the Pistis Sophia speaks repeatedly of the “Little Iao the Good.” This should be the sphere of the Moon. In the hymn to Attis given in this chapter, see n. 6, p. [54] supra, Attis-Dionysos-Osiris is identified with “the holy horned moon of heaven.” and the name Iao may be connected with the Coptic ⲒⲞϨ ioh or “moon.” He may be called the πρῶτος δεσπότης θανάτου “first lord of death,” because Osiris, like Dionysos, was the first to return to life after being torn in pieces. The φέρων ἤδη τὴν ἰδίαν σύμβολον “bearing my own beard as a symbol” seems to refer to the attitude of the Egyptian dead, who is represented as holding his beard in his right hand when introduced into the presence of Osiris. See Budge, Book of the Dead, 1898 (translation volume), frontispiece, or Papyrus of Ani, ibi cit.

[250]. This may be the sphere of Jupiter, who in one of the later documents of the Pistis Sophia is made ruler of the five planets. Sabaoth is probably the Divine Name צבאות “[Lord of] Hosts” which the Greeks took for a proper name. It, like Iao, appears often in the later documents. The πεντὰς δυνατωτέρα “mightier Pentad” may refer to the Three Men (Adamas, his son, and Christos), and the Two Women (the First Woman and Sophia) placed at the head of the universe by the Ophites.

[251]. This should be the sphere of Mercury, the messenger of the gods and leader of souls, who, unlike the higher powers, sees the earth from anigh and without veils. The παρθένου πνεῦμα “spirit of a Virgin” may be the Virgin of Light of the Pistis Sophia, who plays such an important part in the redemption of souls. Hippolytus’ Naassene writer (Hipp. op. cit. Bk V. c. 9, p. 181, Cruice) speaks of Jesus as the true gate and talks in this connection of “Life-giving water” and of “we Christians celebrating the mystery in the third gate”—an allusion which is unintelligible at present, unless it refers to the waters of baptism.

[252]. The sphere of Venus? The planet is said in one of the later documents of the Pistis Sophia to be ruled by a power from “Pistis Sophia, the daughter of Barbelo,” another name for the material antitype of the heavenly Sophia or Mother of Life, whom we shall meet with later.

[253]. The sphere of Mars? No allusion is made elsewhere to the φραγμὸν πυρὸς “fence of fire”; but we do of course often hear of an empyrean or heaven of fire stretching over the earth. The ζωῆς ξύλον is, according to both Origen and Celsus, the Cross; Origen, op. cit. Bk VI. cc. 34, 37.

[254]. The proper order would appear to be:

(1) Horaios ♂ the guardian of the First Gate, i.e. that of Fire.

(2) Ailoaios ♀ the guardian of the Second Gate, i.e. that of Air.

(3) Astaphaios ☿ the guardian of the Third Gate, i.e. that of Water.

Above these we have (4) Adonai the ☉ the first power as distinguished from mere porters or guardians of gates, (5) Iao the ☽ called in the password the second, and (6) and (7) Sabaoth ♃ and Jaldabaoth ♄ above all. This would about correspond with the astronomy of the time, which tried to put the sun in the centre of our system. But the relative places of Sabaoth, Jaldabaoth, and Ailoaios are very uncertain, and Epiphanius in describing the Ophite sect whom he calls “Gnostics” says that some wished to make Ialdabaoth occupy the 6th heaven, and others Ailoaios, called by him Elilaios, while giving the 7th to Sabaoth. Epiph. Haer. XXVI. c. 10, p. 174, Oehler.

[255]. Origen, cont. Cels. Bk VI. c. 31. If ♄ corresponds to Michael and also to Jaldabaoth, ♃ ought to do the like to Suriel and Iao, ♂ to Sabaoth (which would be appropriate enough) and to Raphael, the sun to Adonai and Gabriel, and so on. No system of correspondences, however, can be devised that does not break down on scrutiny. Sammael, which is here Michael’s other name, is used in the Ascensio Isaiae (see Charles, Ascension of Isaiah, p. 6) as a name of Satan. But it may well be that good and bad spirits occupying corresponding places in the universe were sometimes called by the same names. So one of the documents of the Pistis Sophia speaks of an angel cryptically named Zarazaz “who is called by the demons after a strong demon of their own place, Maskelli”: Pistis Sophia, p. 370, Copt.

[256]. Though Babylonian in origin it must early have found its way into Egypt. See Maspero, Ét. Égyptol. II. p. 385 and Chapter VI, supra, vol. I. p. 183 and n. 3.

[257]. Soul, perhaps, does not here mean anything more than animating principle, spark, or breath of life.

[258]. See p. [42], supra.

[259]. τοὺς τελείους ἀβασιλεύτοὐς γενέσθαι καὶ μετασχεῖν τοῦ πληρώματος, Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk V. c. 8, p. 168, Cruice. See also the same expression in n. 3, p. [41], supra.

[260]. Origen’s testimony on this point can be the better relied on, because his good faith, unlike that of writers like Epiphanius, is above suspicion. He and Clement of Alexandria are the only two writers on Gnosticism among the Fathers to whom M. de Faye (Introd. p. 1) will allow “intelligence” and “impartialité.”

[261]. He gives, op. cit. p. 79, a map showing their chief seats from the head of the Persian Gulf on the one hand to Crete and the Adriatic on the other.

[262]. In the Bruce Papyrus mentioned in Chapter X, there is much said about a god called Sitheus, so that it is by no means certain that the Seth after whom they were named was the patriarch of Genesis. He might be the Egyptian Set, whose name is transliterated in the Magic Papyri as Σηϊθ. His appearance in Egypt first as the brother and then as the enemy of Osiris has never been fully accounted for. See “The Legend of Osiris,” P.S.B.A. for 1911, pp. 145 sqq. Epiphanius’ attempt in the Panarion (Haer. XXXIX. c. 3, p. 524, Oehler) to connect the genealogy of Jesus with the Seth of Genesis is not even said to depend on the doctrines of the sect, and the whole chapter reads like an interpolation. Cf. Friedländer, Vorchristliche jüdische Gnosticismus, Göttingen, 1898, p. 25.

[263]. Praedestinatus, de Haeresibus, Bk I. c. 17, p. 237, Oehler.

[264]. Matter, Hist. du Gnost. t. II. p. 176.

[265]. See Acta Philippi before quoted passim.

[266]. Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 28, § 8, p. 241, Harvey. King, Gnostics, etc. p. 101, quotes from Tertullian, de Praescript., “Serpentem magnificant in tantum ut etiam Christo praeferant,” which sounds like an Ophite doctrine; but I have failed to verify the quotation.

[267]. Theodoret, Haer. Fab. I. 24.

[268]. Pistis Sophia, pp. 319, 320, Copt.

[269]. Ibid. p. 384, Copt.

[270]. Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk V. c. 13, pp. 188 sqq., Cruice.

[271]. See Giraud, op. cit. pp. 250 sqq. for references and editions. English translations of some of them have appeared in the “Apocryphal Acts” etc. of Clark’s Ante-Nicene Library, and in Cambridge Texts and Studies.

[272]. This is the opinion of Lipsius. See Dict. Christian Biog. s.v. Gospels, Apocryphal.

[273]. Cf. the similar expressions in the speech of the soul on the Orphic Gold Plates, Chapter IV, vol. I. pp. 131 sqq.

[274]. Epiphanius, Haer. XXVI. c. 13, p. 190, Oehler.

[275]. Ibid. p. 172, Oehler. Cf. the “Logia Jesu” published by the Egypt Exploration Fund in Oxyrhynchus Papyri, 1898, p. 3. “Wherever there are two, they are not without God, and wherever there is one alone, I say I am with him. Raise the stone, and there thou shalt find me, cleave the wood and there am I.”

[276]. Pistis Sophia, pp. 206, 230, Copt.

[277]. Grüber, Die Ophiten, Würzburg, 1864, pp. 173 sqq., points out that the Ophites, like the Valentinians, seem to have used the Peshitto or Syriac version of the Canonical Books for their quotations. He says the fact had been already noticed by Harvey. It is, of course, another indication of the Anatolian or Syrian origin of the sect.

[278]. Irenaeus, I. 28, c. 5, p. 237, Harvey, gives a list of the books which they assigned to each planetary power, Jaldabaoth taking the lion’s share with the Hexateuch, Amos and Habbakuk.

[279]. Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk V. c. 7, p. 150, Cruice. Proverbs xxiv. 16 seems the text referred to.

[280]. Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk V. c. 25, pp. 226, 227, Cruice. Sophia is evidently the serpent in this combination.

[281]. The Ebionites, or whatever other Judaeo-Christian sect is responsible for the Clementines, make St Peter affirm that Jesus “did not proclaim Himself to be God,” and that “that which is begotten cannot be compared with that which is unbegotten or self-begotten.” See Clem. Hom. XVI. cc. 15, 16.

[282]. The same may be said of practically all Christians of the Apostolic age. See Hatch, H.L. p. 124. It was the reproach which Celsus cast at the whole Christian community in the reign of Marcus Aurelius. See Origen, cont. Cels. Bk III. c. 44. Origen, op. cit. Bk III. c. 9, retorts that “now” (i.e. circa 230 A.D.) not only rich but highly-placed men and well-born ladies are to be found among the Christians. The change probably took place during the reign of Commodus; Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. Bk V. c. 21. Origen and Eusebius agree that this entry of educated men into the Church brought heresy along with it. See Origen, op. cit. Bk III. c. 12.

[283]. Bréhier, “La Cosmologie Stoicienne,” R.H.R. t. LXIV. (1911), pp. 1-9.

[284]. A. W. Benn, The Philosophy of Greece, 1898, pp. 246, 255.

[285]. Kenyon, Handbook to the Textual Criticism of the N. T., 1901, p. 138, says, “Mr Gwilliam, whose opinion, as editor of the Peshitto, is entitled to all respect, believes it to be the original translation of the Scriptures into Syriac,” but thinks the question not yet decided.

[286]. Kenyon, Greek Papyri, p. 83.

[287]. 1 Kings xviii. 40.

[288]. See the case of Dr Michael Hudson quoted by Sir Walter Scott from Peck’s Desiderata Curiosa in his notes to Woodstock; and Cromwell’s letter to the Houses on the siege of Drogheda.

[289]. M. Cumont’s theory, that the Jewish colonies in Phrygia had introduced the worship among the Pagans of Yahweh under the name of “Hypsistos” is not convincing; but it is probable that in religious matters these colonists gave more than they borrowed. The story of the king of Adiabene who wished to turn Jew (see [Chapter XII], infra) is significant. Cf. the princes of the same kingdom who fell while fighting valiantly in the Jewish ranks in the Sunday battle of Gabao in which Cestius Gallus was defeated. See Josephus, Bell. Bk II. c. 19, § 2.

[290]. Tertullian, de Praescript. c. VIII.

[291]. Dill, Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius, p. 346.

[292]. Ibid. pp. 293, 294.

[293]. Like Callias. See Chapter II, vol. I. p. 76, supra.

[294]. Arrian, Anabasis, Bk IV. c. 9.

[295]. Tacitus, Hist. Bk III. c. 81.

[296]. Tacitus, Annal. Bk XV. c. 62.

[297]. Ibid. Bk XVI. c. 34.

[298]. Matter, Hist. du Gnost. t. I. p. 398.

[299]. Eusebius, Eccl. Hist. Bk IV. c. 6.

[300]. Clem. Alex. Strom. Bk I. c. 15.

[301]. Cf. Hadrian’s letter to Servian, Chapter II, vol. I. p. 86, supra.

[302]. Amélineau, Le Gnosticisme Égyptien, p. 30. Its early shape was probably more magical and less ethical than its later developments, because, as the same author (P.S.B.A. 1888, p. 392) says, for several centuries it was only the lowest classes in Egypt that became Christians.

[303]. Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 18, p. 197, Harvey. Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk VII. c. 28, p. 369, Cruice.

[304]. So Hippolytus, loc. cit., who copies Irenaeus’ statement word for word. But something has evidently slipped out of the text. If Christ and Satan were both the enemies of Yahweh, we should have the συμφώνησις or fellowship declared impossible by St Paul in 2 Cor. vi. 15.

[305]. Matter, Hist. du Gnost. t. I. p. 349.

[306]. Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 18, p. 197, Harvey; Hippolytus, Bk VII. c. 28, p. 367, Cruice; Epiphanius, Haer. XXIII. c. 1, p. 135, Oehler.

[307]. Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 19, § 1, p. 199, Harvey. For the name Abraxas see ibid. p. 203, and Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk VII. c. 26, p. 361, Cruice. As Harvey points out in his note, the passage containing it has evidently slipped out of Irenaeus’ text and has been added at the foot of the roll.

[308]. Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk VII. c. 20, p. 344, Cruice. The revelations in question must therefore have been made after the Resurrection. Clement of Alexandria says that Basilides was a disciple of Glaucias, the interpreter of Peter: Strom. Bk VII. c. 17.

[309]. Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk VII. c. 21, pp. 345, 346, Cruice.

[310]. ἀθελήτως καὶ ἀνοήτως καὶ ἀναισθήτως. Hippolytus, loc. cit. This στίγμα ἀμέριστον or “indivisible point” from which all things come is mentioned in Simon Magus’ Apophasis (see Chapter VI, vol. I. p. 194, supra) as well as in the Bruce Papyrus of Chapter X, infra.

[311]. Or like the Orphic egg from which Phanes came forth. See Chapter IV, vol. I. p. 123, supra.

[312]. Ἦν, φησίν, ἐν αὐτῷ τῷ σπέρματι Υἱότης, τριμερὴς κατὰ πάντα, τῷ οὐκ ὄντι θεῷ ὁμοούσιος, γενητὴ ἐξ οὐκ ὄντων, Hippolytus, op. cit, Bk VII. c. 22, p. 349, Cruice. If these are Basilides’ actual words, he would seem to have been the first author to make use of the expression Homoousios.

[313]. Hippolytus, op. et loc. cit. p. 350, Cruice.

[314]. Ἔχειν μὲν αὐτὸ μετ’ αὐτῆς οὐκ ἠδύνατο· ἦν γὰρ οὐχ ὀμοούσιον· οὐδὲ φύσιν εἶχε μετὰ τῆς Υἱότητος. Hippolytus, op. et loc. cit. p. 351, Cruice.

[315]. Had Basilides or Hippolytus read Horace?

[316]. Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk VII. c. 23, p. 353, Cruice.

[317]. Amélineau, Le Gnosticisme Égyptien, pp. 139-152. So Mallet, Culte de Neith à Sais, Paris, 1888, pp. 213, 214, says that both Basilides and Valentinus drew their doctrines from the late form of Egyptian religion which he describes.

[318]. Paut neteru. Maspero, Études Égyptol., II. pp. 244, 245. Cf. the whole of the luminous essay Sur l’Ennéade in the same volume and especially pp. 385, 386. Cf. Naville, Old Egyptian Faith, p. 117; Erman, Hist. Egyptian Religion, p. 78.

[319]. Tu enim, aiunt, omnes cognosce, te autem nemo cognoscat.... Non autem multos scire posse haec, sed unum a mille, et duo a myriadibus. Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 19, § 3, p. 202, Harvey. Epiphanius, Haer. XXIV. c. 5, p. 152, Oehler, while copying Irenaeus’ account puts it rather differently, Ὑμεῖς πάντα γινώσκετε, ὑμᾶς δὲ μηδεὶς γινωσκέτω, which probably represents Irenaeus’ own expression. One of the authors of the Pistis Sophia had evidently heard of Basilides’ remark about 1 in 1000. Cf. Pistis Sophia, p. 354, Copt.

[320]. So Irenaeus, loc. cit., p. 203, Harvey, makes the Basilidians say that they were neither Jews nor Christians: Et Judaeos quidem jam non esse dicunt, Christianos autem nondum—or, as Epiphanius, loc. cit., more strongly puts it: Ἰουδαίους μὲν ἑαυτοὺς μηκέτι εἶναι φάσκουσι, Χριστιανοὺς δὲ μηκέτι γεγενῆσθαι.

[321]. Epiphanius, Pan. Haer. XXXI. c. 2, p. 306, Oehler. Amélineau, Gnost. Ég. p. 168, defends Epiphanius’ statement.

[322]. Matter, Hist. du Gnost. t. II. p. 37, says that Basilides died about 134 A.D. and that Valentinus’ teaching began to make itself heard about the year following; but he gives no authorities for the statement. Epiphanius, loc. cit., does say, however, that Valentinus was later in time than Basilides and “Satornilus” (Saturninus). There seems no authority for Matter’s statement that he was of Jewish origin.

[323]. Amélineau, Gnost. Ég. p. 176, and Clement of Alexandria as there quoted. Cf. King, Gnostics, p. 263.

[324]. Matter, Hist. du Gnost. t. II. p. 36.

[325]. Ἐπεὶ οὖν γέγονε πρώτη καὶ δευτέρα ἀναδρομὴ τῆς Υἱότητος, καὶ μεμένηκεν αὐτοῦ τὸ Πνεῦμα τὸ Ἅγιον τὸν εἰρημένον τρόπον, στερεωμάτων ὑπερκοσμίων καὶ τοῦ κόσμου μεταξὺ τεταγμένον: Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk VII. c. 23, p. 353, Cruice.

[326]. Hippolytus, loc. cit. p. 354, Cruice.

[327]. Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk V. c. 8, pp. 158, 159, Cruice, says simply in speaking of the Naassene writer: οὗτοι εἰσὶν οἱ τρεὶς ὑπέρογκοι λόγοι “Καυλακαῦ, Σαυλασαῦ, Ζεησάρ.” “Καυλακαῦ” τοῦ ἄνω, τοῦ Ἀδάμαντος, “Σαυλασαῦ,” τοῦ κάτω θνητοῦ, “Ζεησάρ” τοῦ ἐπὶ τὰ ἄνω ῥεύσαντος Ἰορδάνου. “These are the three weighty words: Caulacau [the name] of him who is above, [i.e.] Adamas; Saulasau of the mortal one who is beneath; Zeesar of the Jordan which flows on high.” Epiphanius, Haer. XXV. c. 4, pp. 162, 164, Oehler, says that they are taken from the words of Isaiah xxviii. 10, צו לצו קו לקו זעיר שם translated in the A.V. “precept upon precept, line upon line, here a little”; but the resemblance is not very close, and it is more probable that the barbarous words of the text cover some sort of cryptogram. Irenaeus, Bk Ι. c. 19, § 3, p. 201, Harvey, says of the Basilidians: Quemadmodum et mundus nomen esse, in quo dicunt descendisse et ascendisse Salvatorem, esse Caulacau, which Harvey says is unintelligible. See Salmon, s.h.v. in Dict. of Christian Biog., where he tries hard to explain the name and its use. Cheyne, Prophecies of Isaiah, 2nd ed. vol. I. p. 162, would make this Caulacau, however, equivalent to the “word of Jehovah” or Logos. Cf. Renan, Hist. du Peuple d’Israel, Eng. ed. 1897, II. pp. 436, 437.

[328]. Tertullian, adv. Valentinianos, c. 5.

[329]. Clem. Alex. Strom. Bk II. c. 20; Bk IV. cc. 9, 138; Bk VI. c. 6. So Origen, to whose frequent quotations from the Valentinian Heracleon we owe all that we know of that shrewd Biblical critic. See A. E. Brooke, Fragments of Heracleon, Cambridge Texts and Studies, vol. Ι. p. 4. De Faye’s opinion that Clement and Origen were the only Fathers who treated Gnosticism with intelligence and sometimes judicially has been quoted above.

[330]. Epiphanius, Pan. Haer. XXXI. c. 1, p. 306, Oehler.

[331]. Valentinus.... Pythagoricus magis quam Christianus, vanam quandam ac perniciosam doctrinam eructans, et velut arithmeticam, id est numerositatis, novam fallaciam praedicans, multorumque animas ignorantium captivavit, Philastrius, de Haeresibus liber, c. 38, p. 43, Oehler, vol. I.

[332]. [Valentiniani et Valentinus] Hi per orientem dispersi graviter dei ecclesiam vulnerarunt, Praedestinatus, Bk Ι. c. 11, p. 235, Oehler, vol. Ι.

[333]. Eusebius, Vita Constantini, Bk III. cc. 64, 65.

[334]. Gibbon, Decline and Fall, vol. III. c. 27, p. 174, Bury.

[335]. King, Gnostics, p. 13.

[336]. Irenaeus, Bk Ι. c. 1, § 1, pp. 8, 9, Harvey; Tertullian, adv. Val. c. VII. Is this the “Grace” for whose presence the soul prays in the apologiae of the Ophites? See last chapter.

[337]. Ὅλως, φησί, γεννητὸν οὐδέν, Πατὴρ δὲ ἦν μόνος ἀγέννητος, οὐ τόπον ἔχων, οὐ χρόνον, οὐ σύμβουλον, οὐκ ἄλλην τινὰ κατ’ οὐδένα τῶν τρόπων νοηθῆναι δυναμένην οὐσίαν: Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk VI. c. 29, p. 280, Cruice.

[338]. Diogenes Laertius, Vit. Philosoph. Bk VIII. c. 19.

[339]. Philippe Berger, “Les Stèles Puniques de la Bibliothèque Nationale,” Gazette Archéologique, 11me ann. Paris, 1876, p. 123, says that the Aryan genius sees atmospheric phenomena where the Semite imagines persons who unite and give birth (personnes qui s’unissent et s’engendrent les unes les autres). Renan, Hist. du Peuple d’Israel, Paris, 1887, t. I. p. 49, shows that all Semites are naturally euhemerists and therefore anthropomorphists.

[340]. Amélineau, Gnost. Ég. pp. 198 sqq., shows that Sige appears not only in the “Italic School” of Valentinus’ followers, but also in the Oriental School which is more likely to represent the teaching of Valentinus himself. This may in fact be deduced from the words which Hippolytus puts into his mouth (op. cit. Bk VI. c. 29, p. 281, Cruice): Ἀγάπη, φησίν, ἦν ὅλος, ἡ δὲ ἀγάπη οὐκ ἔστιν ἀγάπη, ἐὰν μὴ ᾖ τὸ ἀγαπώμενον. “He, he says, is all Love, and Love is not Love, unless there is something to love.” Thus the Orphics called their Phanes or firstborn god Eros.

[341]. As has been many times said, not “Only-begotten,” but “unique.” See Badham in Academy, 5 Sept. 1896.

[342]. ταύτην [Sige] δὲ ὑποδεξαμένην τὸ σπέρμα τοῦτο καὶ ἐγκύμονα γενομένην, ἀποκυῆσαι Νοῦν, ὅμοιόν τε καὶ ἶσον τῷ προβαλόντι, καὶ μόνον χωροῦντα τὸ μέγεθος τοῦ Πατρός: Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 1, § 1, p. 9, Harvey: “and she having received this seed and becoming pregnant, brought forth Nous, like and equal to him who had projected him, and alone containing the greatness of the Father.”

[343]. Id. Bk I. c. 1, § 1, pp. 9, 10, Harvey.

[344]. Ibid. p. 10, Harvey.

[345]. Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk VI. c. 29, p. 280, Cruice.

[346]. Tertullian, adv. Valentinianos, c. 7.

[347]. Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 5, § 2, p. 106, Harvey.

[348]. See p. [128] infra.

[349]. Tertullian, adv. Valentinianos, c. 36.

[350]. Clem. Alex. Strom. Bk I. c. 1.

[351]. Ibid. Bk I. cc. 7, 16.

[352]. Ibid. Bk II. c. 19.

[353]. Ibid. Bk II. c. 20.

[354]. Ibid. Bk II. c. 12.

[355]. See Chapter VI, vol. I. p. 174, supra.

[356]. Clem. Alex. Strom. Bk VII. c. 1.

[357]. Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk VI. c. 29, p. 281, Cruice.

[358]. i.e. Profound.

[359]. Not “self-existent,” but maker of his own φύσις or nature.

[360]. See n. 2, p. [98] supra.

[361]. Harvey reads here αἰώνιος “everlasting,” which makes at least as good sense as the other.

[362]. Some memory of this seems to have enlivened the disputes between the Nominalists and Realists of the XIIIth century. Cf. the wrangling of the Doctors at the School of Salerno in Longfellow’s Golden Legend

I, with the Doctor Seraphic, maintain

That the word that’s not spoken, but conceived in the brain,

Is the type of Eternal Generation,

The spoken word is the Incarnation.

[363]. They are also probably places or receptacles. In the Pistis Sophia we read repeatedly of the three χωρήματα and of the τόπος ἀληθείας.

[364]. Amélineau, Gnost. Égypt. pp. 200 sqq.

[365]. So Hope Moulton, Early Zoroastrianism, 1913, p. 114, points out that half of the Persian Amshaspands or archangels bear names expressing “what Mazda is” and the other half “what Mazda gives.” There is much likeness, as has been said, between the Amshaspands and the “Roots” of Simon Magus.

[366]. It is worth noticing that these are the three “theological” virtues, Faith, Hope, and Charity.

[367]. Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk VI. c. 23, pp. 269-271, Cruice, wishes to make out that all this is derived from what he calls the “Pythagorean” system of numbers. Anyone wishing to pursue these “silly cabalisms” further is recommended to read Harvey’s Introduction to Valentinus’ system, op. cit. pp. cxv-cxvii.

[368]. Ἀπὸ δὲ τῶν δεκαδύο ὁ δωδέκατος καὶ νεώτατος πάντων τῶν εἰκοσιοκτὼ Αἰώνων, θῆλυς ὢν καὶ καλούμενος Σοφία, κατενόησε τὸ πλῆθος καὶ τὴν δύναμιν τῶν γεγεννηκότων Αἰώνων, καὶ ἀνέδραμεν εἰς τὸ βάθος τὸ τοῦ Πατρός. “But the twelfth of the twelve, and the youngest of all the eight and twenty aeons, who is a female and called Sophia, considered the number and power of those aeons who were begotten (?) and went on high to the height of the Father”: Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk VI. c. 30, p. 283, Cruice. The “eight and twenty aeons” shows that Valentinus, according to Hippolytus, did not reckon Bythos and Sige in the first Ogdoad.

[369]. A further proof that the primitive doctrine of Valentinus did not give a spouse to Bythos.

[370]. Ἐν μὲν γὰρ τῷ ἀγεννήτῳ, φησίν, ἔστι πάντα ὁμοῦ· (ὁμοῦ seems here to mean “without distinction of time or place.” Cf. the “None is afore or after other” of the Athanasian Creed) ἐν δὲ τοῖς γεννητοῖς, τὸ μὲν θῆλυ ἔστιν οὐσίας προβλητικόν, τὸ δὲ ἄρρεν μορφωτικὸν τῆς ὑπὸ τοῦ θήλεως προβαλλομένης οὐσίας. Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk VI. c. 30, p. 284, Cruice.

[371]. Καὶ τοῦτο ἐστί, φησίν, ὃ λέγει Μωϋσῆς· “ἡ δὲ γῆ ἦν ἀόρατος καὶ ἀκατασκεύαστος.” “And this, he says, is the saying of Moses. ‘And the earth was invisible and unshapen’”—a curious variant of the A.V., Hippolytus, loc. cit. He goes on to say that this is “the good and heavenly Jerusalem,” the land in which the children of Israel are promised milk and honey. It should be noticed, however, that even this unshapen being, like all the Sophias, was identified with the Earth.

[372]. Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk VI. c. 31, pp. 284, 285. Irenaeus, Bk I. cc. 1, 4, p. 21, Harvey, says that Monogenes [Nous] put forth (πρόβαλε) the pair κατὰ προμήθειαν τοῦ Πατρὸς, apparently without the aid of his partner Aletheia. Hippolytus’ account is the simpler, as making all the Pleroma thus descend from a single pair, and is therefore, probably, the earlier.

[373]. Hippolytus, loc. cit., says that this new aeon was called Ὅρος “Horus,” or “The Limit,” because he separates the Pleroma or Fulness from the Hysterema or Deficiency (i.e. that which lacks God), which is one of those puns which will be familiar to all Egyptologists (see Erman, Life in Ancient Egypt, Eng. ed. p. 396, for other examples). He is also said to have been called Metocheus or the Partaker, because he shares in the Deficiency, doubtless as being partly outside the Pleroma. His name of Horus was probably suggested by that of the old Egyptian god whose figure must have been familiar to every Alexandrian. In the IInd century A.D., this last generally appears with hawk’s head and human body dressed in the cuirass and boots of a Roman gendarme or stationarius, which would be appropriate enough for a sentinel or guard.

[374]. Hippolytus, loc. cit. pp. 284, 285, Cruice.

[375]. Hippolytus, loc. cit. pp. 286, 287, Cruice. Christ and the Holy Spirit, having discharged the duty laid upon them, have retired with Sophia “the youngest of the aeons” within the Pleroma and cannot again issue forth.

[376]. Hippolytus, op. cit. c. 32: ἔδοξεν αὐτοῖς μὴ μόνον κατὰ συζυγίαν δεδοξακέναι τὸν υἵον, δοξάσαι [δὲ] καὶ διὰ προσφορᾶς καρπῶν πρεπόντων τῷ Πατρί. “It seemed good to them [the aeons of the Pleroma] not only to magnify the Son by conjunction, but also by an offering of pleasing fruits to the Father.” So in the mysteries of Isis, Osiris is called the fruit of the vine Dionysos. See Athenagoras, Legatid. c. XXII. Plainly Bythos and Nous or Monogenes are here represented as Father and Son as in the Ophite myth. The new projection is necessary to accord with the text about the whole Pleroma dwelling together bodily in Jesus. Cf. Colossians i. 19.

[377]. The expression ὁ ἀρχιερεὺς ὁ μέγας is repeated by Clement of Alexandria, Protrept. c. XII., possibly with reference to this passage. It may be noticed, however, that Jesus is here also made the Messenger or Ambassador of the Light as with the Ophites. It will be seen later that he occupies the same place with the Manichaeans. Cf. [Chapter XIII], infra.

[378]. Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk VI. c. 32, p. 289, Cruice.

[379]. Ibid. p. 290, Cruice. Κατὰ τοῦτο τοίνυν τὸ μέρος, θνητή τις ἐστὶν ἡ ψυχή, μεσότης τις οὖσα· ἔστι γὰρ Ἑβδομὰς καὶ Κατάπαυσις. “According to this, therefore,” [he has just said that fire has a twofold power, for there is a fire which devours everything and which cannot be extinguished] “part (of the Demiurge) is a certain soul which is subject to death, and a certain substance which occupies a middle place. For it is a Hebdomad and a laying to rest.” The passage is not easy, but seems to mean that some of the souls made by the Demiurge are mortal, while others are susceptible of salvation. Cf. n. 1, p. [109], infra. The name Hebdomad evidently refers to the seven astronomical heavens under the rule of the Demiurge, and the title “Ancient of Days” identifies him, like the Jaldabaoth of the Ophites, with the God of the Jews.

[380]. Called Ogdoadas or eighth, because it is next above the seven heavens; but Sophia, the 28th, was the last of the aeons. We see, therefore, that Valentinus, like the Ophites of the diagram, is reckoning forwards and backwards in the most confusing way.

[381]. So Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 1, § 9, pp. 44, 45, Harvey, says that they [the Valentinians] say that the seven heavens are endowed with intelligence (νοητούς) and that they suppose them to be angels, and that the Demiurge is himself an angel like God. Also that Paradise is a heaven above the third, and that a fourth angel rules (?) there, and that from him Adam took somewhat while talking to him. Whatever this story may mean, it is curious to see how readily the Gnostics identified in name a heavenly place with its ruler, as in the titles of kings and peers.

[382]. Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 1, § 10, pp. 47, 48, Harvey, says that the Devil or Cosmocrator and all the spiritual things of evil (τὰ πνευματικὰ τῆς πονηρίας) were made out of the pain (λύπη) of Sophia, and that he is the creation of the Demiurge, but knows what is above him, because he is a spirit, while his creator is ignorant that there is anything higher than himself, because he is only ruler of animal things (ψυχικὰ ὑπάρχοντα). In this, which is probably the teaching of Ptolemy, Valentinus’ successor is seen to be reverting to the Ophite ideas. Hippolytus, who here probably gives us Valentinus’ own doctrine, says on the other hand (op. cit. Bk VI. c. 33, pp. 290, 291, Cruice): Ὥσπερ οὖν τῆς ψυχικῆς οὐσίας ἡ πρώτη καὶ μεγίστη δύναμις γέγονεν εἰκὼν [the text is here restored by Cruice: τοῦ μονογενοῦς υἱοῦ, οὕτω τῆς ὑλικῆς οὐσίας δύναμις] διάβολος, ὁ ἄρχων τοῦ κόσμον τούτου· τῆς δὲ τῶν δαιμόνων οὐσίας, ἤτις ἐστὶν ἐκ τῆς ἀπορίας, ὁ Βεελζεβούδ. “As therefore the first and greatest power of the animal substance (the Demiurge) came into being as the image of the unique son (Nous), so the power of the material substance is the Devil, the Ruler of this world: and Beelzebud [the power] of the substance of demons which came into being from the perplexity” (of Sophia). It has been shown elsewhere (P.S.B.A. 1901, pp. 48, 49) that this Beelzebud or Beelzebuth is written in the Magic Papyri Jabezebuth or Yahweh Sabaoth, probably in pursuance of the parallelism which gives every god or superior power his correspondent personality in the inferior or evil world. In all magic, mediaeval or otherwise, Beelzebuth is carefully distinguished from Satan.

[383]. Matthew x. 25, xii. 24, 27; Mark iii. 22; Luke xi. 15, have βεελξεβούλ, while the Peshitto writes the more familiar Beelzebub. See P.S.B.A. quoted in last note.

[384]. Called also the Heavenly Jerusalem. Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk VI. c. 32, p. 290, Cruice.

[385]. Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 1, § 10, p. 49, Harvey: Δημιουργήσαντα δὴ τὸν κόσμον, πεποιηκέναι καὶ τὸν ἄνθρωπον τὸν χοϊκόν· οὐκ ἀπὸ ταύτης δὲ τῆς ξηρᾶς γῆς, ἀλλ’ ἀπὸ τῆς ἀοράτου οὐσίας, ἀπὸ τοῦ κεχυμένου καὶ ῥευστοῦ τῆς ὕλης λαβόντα· καὶ εἰς τοῦτον ἐμφυσῆσαι τὸν ψυχικὸν διορίζονται. “Having indeed fashioned the world, he (the Demiurge) made material man; not taking him out of this dry earth, but from the unseen substance, from the poured forth and liquid matter, and into him, they declare, he breathed that which is of the soul.” Although this might be taken for a Ptolemaic elaboration or embroidery of Valentinus’ own doctrine, it is repeated in almost identical words in the Excerpta Theodoti of Clement of Alexandria, which represent the teaching of the Oriental School, and it is therefore possibly the statement of Valentinus himself. Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk VI. c. 34, p. 293, Cruice, is quite in accord with this. Irenaeus says later (Bk I. c. 1, § 11) with reference to the body of Jesus: καὶ ὑλικὸν δὲ οὐδ’ ὁτιοῦν εἰληφέναι λέγουσιν αὐτόν· μὴ γὰρ εἶναι τὴν ὕλην δεκτικὴν σωτηρίας. “And they say that He took on Himself nothing whatever of matter; for matter is not susceptible of salvation.” From which it is to be inferred that Valentinus rejected the resurrection of the body.

[386]. Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 1, § 4, p. 23, Harvey, says that when Jesus, the Joint Fruit of the Pleroma, was projected, Angels of the same kind as himself (ὁμογενεῖς) were projected with him as a guard of honour. That these are the spiritual spouses of the souls of men is confirmed by Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk VI. c. 34, p. 292, according to Cruice’s emendation: Ὑποδιῄρηται δὲ καὶ τὰ ἐν τῇ Ὀγδοάδι, καὶ προβεβήκασιν ἡ Σοφία, ἥτις ἐστὶ μήτηρ πάντων τῶν ζώντων κατ’ αὐτούς, καὶ ὁ κοινὸς τοῦ Πληρώματος καρπὸς ὁ Λόγος, [καὶ] οἵτινες εἰσὶν ἄγγελοι ἐπουράνιοι, πολιτευόμενοι ἐν Ἰερουσαλὴμ τῇ ἄνω, τῇ ἐν οὐρανοῖς. “The things which are in the Ogdoad also are subdivided, and there proceed (from it) Sophia who is, according to them, the Mother of All Living, and the Joint Fruit of the Pleroma, the Logos, and there are certain heavenly angels who are citizens of the Jerusalem which is above, that which is in the heavens.” So later (ibid. p. 293, Cruice) ... οἵτινές εἰσι λόγοι ἄνωθεν κατεσπαρμένοι ἀπὸ τοῦ κοινοῦ τοῦ Πληρώματος καρποῦ καὶ τῆς Σοφίας εἰς τοῦτον τὸν κόσμον, κατοικοῦντες ἐν [σώμα]τι χοϊκῷ μετὰ ψυχῆς, ὅταν δαίμονες μὴ συνοικῶσι τῇ ψύχῃ. “There are certain Logoi sown from above in the world by the Joint Fruit of the Pleroma and Sophia, which dwell in the material body with the soul, when there are no demons dwelling with it.” Clement of Alexandria, in Strom. Bk V. c. 14, points out that the notion of demons dwelling with the soul is to be found in Plato, and quotes the passage from the Vision of Er (Rep. Bk X. c. 15) about the souls of men between births each receiving from the hand of Lachesis a demon as their guides through life. It is more likely, however, to have been derived from the Zoroastrian belief in the Fravashis or Ferouers, celestial spirits who live with Ahura Mazda and the powers of light, until they are sent on earth to be joined with the souls of men, and to combat the powers of Ahriman (see L. C. Casartelli, La Philosophie Religieuse du Mazdéisme, Paris, 1884, pp. 76-80, for references). Cf. Hope Moulton, op. cit. c. VIII. passim.

[387]. Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 1, § 12, p. 59, Harvey: Τοὺς δὲ πνευματικοὺς ἀποδυσαμένους τὰς ψυχὰς καὶ πνεύματα νοερὰ γενομένους, ἀκρατήτως καὶ ἀοράτως ἐντὸς πληρώματος εἰσελθόντας νύμφας ἀποδοθήσεσθαι τοῖς περὶ τὸν Σωτῆρα ἀγγέλοις. “And the Spirituals, or Pneumatis, doffing their souls and becoming intelligent spirits, shall enter unperceived and unseen within the Pleroma, and shall be given as brides to the angels about the Saviour.” This suggestion, which completely shocked the modesty of Tertullian, may be connected with the Zoroastrian idea of the virgin who appears to the believer as his conductor at the bridge Chinvat. See [Chapter XII], infra.

[388]. This appears in the Excerpta Theodoti, fr. 63, Migne’s Patrol. Graeci, t. IX. col. 689: Ἡ μὲν οὖν πνευματικῶν ἀνάπαυσις ἐν Κυριακῇ ἐν Ὀγδοάδι ἡ Κυριακὴ ὀνομάζεται· παρὰ τῇ μητρὶ ἔχοντα τὰς ψυχὰς τὰ ἐνδύματα ἄχρι συντελείας· αἱ δὲ ἄλλαι πισταὶ ψυχαὶ παρὰ τῷ Δημιονυργῷ· περὶ δὲ τὴν συντέλειαν ἀναχώρουσι καὶ αὐτοὶ εἰς Ὀγδοάδας. Εἶτα τὸ δεῖπνον τὸν γάμον κοινὸν πάντων τῶν σωζωθέντων, ἄχρις ἂν ἀπισωθῇ πάντα καὶ ἄλληλα γνωρίσῃ. “Therefore the repose of the Spirituals in [the dwelling] of the Lord, that is, in the Ogdoad, is called the Lord’s rest” (cf. Irenaeus, Bk I. cc. 1, 9, p. 46, Harvey): “the garments [i.e. natures] containing the souls [will remain] with the Mother until the Consummation. And the other faithful souls (will remain) with the Demiurge; and at the Consummation they will withdraw, and they also will go into the Ogdoad. Then will be the Wedding Feast of all those who are saved until all things shall be made equal and all things mutually made known.” This heavenly banquet, of which we may be quite sure Valentinus made the Marriage in Cana a type, will be met with again in the worship of Mithras ([Chapter XII], infra). But it was also well known to the Orphics (see Abel’s Orphica, Frag. 227, etc.), and the question repeats itself: Did the Orphics borrow the idea from the Persians, or the Mithraists from the Orphics?

[389]. Valentinus may have found this doctrine in Egypt, where as Maspero points out (Ét. Égyptol. I. p. 398) only the rich and noble were thought to enjoy the life beyond the grave.

[390]. Valentinus’ remark about the Cosmocrator being superior in knowledge to the Demiurge because he is a spirit (see n. 1, p. [108] supra) much complicates the problem, and brings us pretty near to the Dualism of the Avesta. That all matter was in Valentinus’ opinion transitory appears from Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 1, § 13, where it is said that when all the seed scattered by Sophia in the world, i.e. the souls of the Pneumatici, is gathered in, the fire which is within the Cosmos shall blaze forth and after destroying all matter shall be extinguished with it.

[391]. Clem. Alex., Strom. Bk II. c. 8, quotes an epistle of Valentinus in which he speaks of the terror of the angels at the sight of man because of the things which he spoke: διὰ τὸν ἀοράτως ἐν αὐτῷ σπέρμα δεδωκότα τῆς ἄνωθεν οὐσίας, καὶ παρρησιαζόμενον “because of that within him which yielded a germ of the substance on high, and spoke freely.” So Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 1, § 10, p. 51, Harvey: Ἔλαθεν οὖν, ὡς φασί, τὸν Δημιουργὸν ὁ συγκατασπαρεὶς τῷ ἐμφυσήματι αὐτοῦ ὑπὸ τῆς Σοφίας πνευματικὸς ἀνθρώπων [ἄνθρωπος] ἀρρήτῳ [adj. δυνάμει καὶ] προνοίᾳ. “It escaped the Demiurge, therefore, as they say, that the man whom he had formed by his breath was at the same time made spiritual by Sophia with unspeakable power and foresight.” So that, as Irenaeus says a few lines later, man has his soul from the Demiurge, his body from Chaos, his fleshly part (τὸ σαρκικὸν) from matter, and his spiritual man from the Mother, Achamoth [i.e. חכמת “Wisdom”].

[392]. Clem. Alex. Strom. Bk IV. c. 13, quoting “a certain homily” (τις ὁμιλία) of Valentinus: Ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς ἀθανατοί ἐστε, καὶ τέκνα ζωῆς ἐστε αἰωνίας καὶ τὸν θάνατον ἠθέλετε μερίσασθαι εἰς ἑαυτούς, ἵνα δαπανήσητε αὐτὸν καὶ ἀναλώσητε καὶ ἀποθάνῃ ὁ θάνατος ἐν ὑμῖν καὶ δι’ ὑμῶν. Ὅταν γὰρ τὸν μὲν κόσμον λύητε, ὑμεῖς δὲ καταλύησθε, κυριεύετε τῆς κτίσεως καὶ τῆς φθορᾶς ἁπάσης. “You were deathless from the beginning and the children of life everlasting, and you wish to share out death among you, in order that you may dissipate and destroy it and that death may die in and by you; for when you put an end to the world and are yourselves put an end to, you have rule over creation and all corruption.” So one of the documents of the Pistis Sophia speaks of this world being finally consumed by the fire “which the perfect wield.” It was doubtless such predictions which gave colour to the charge of incendiarism made by the Roman authorities against the Christians generally. For the translation of the pneumatics to the Ogdoad see next note.

[393]. Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk VI. c. 31, p. 290, Cruice: Ἐὰν ἐξομοιωθῇ τοῖς ἄνω ἐν Ὀγδοάδι, ἀθάνατος ἐγένετο καὶ ἦλθεν εἰς τὴν Ὀγδοάδα ἥτις ἐστί, φησίν, Ἰερουσαλὴμ ἐπουράνιος· ἐὰν δὲ ἐξομοιωθῇ τῇ ὕλῃ, τουτέστι τοῖς πάθεσι τοῖς ὑλικοῖς, φθαρτή ἐστι καὶ ἀπώλετο. “If [the soul] be of the likeness of those on high in the Ogdoad, it is born deathless and goes to the Ogdoad which is, he says, the heavenly Jerusalem; but if it be of the likeness of matter, that is, if it belongs to the material passions, it is corruptible and is utterly destroyed.”

[394]. ψυχικὸς ἄνθρωπος translated in the A.V. by “natural man” evidently means in the Valentinian sense those who are animated or have had breathed into them the breath of life merely. It has nothing to do with soul as we understand the term.

[395]. Amélineau, Gnost. Ég. p. 225.

[396]. Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk VI. c. 36, pp. 297, 298, Cruice: Ἔδει οὖν διορθωμένων τῶν ἄνω κατὰ τὴν αὐτὴν ἀκολουθίαν καὶ τὰ ἐνθάδε τυχεῖν διωρθώσεως. “Wherefore when things on high had been put straight, it had to be according to the law of sequences that those here below should be put straight also.”

[397]. Hippolytus, op. cit. p. 297, Cruice: ἐδιδάχθη γὰρ ὑπὸ τῆς Σοφίας ὁ Δημιουργός, ὅτι οὐκ ἔστιν αὐτὸς Θεὸς μόνος ὡς ἐνόμιζε, καὶ πλὴν αὐτοῦ ἕτερος (οὐκ) ἔστιν· ἀλλ’ ἔγνω διδαχθεὶς ὑπὸ τῆς Σοφίας τὸν κρείττονα· κατηχήθη γὰρ ὑπ’ αὐτῆς, καὶ ἐμυήθη καὶ ἐδιδάχθη τὸ μέγα τοῦ Πατρὸς καὶ τῶν Αἰώνων μυστήριον, καὶ ἐξεῖπεν αὐτὸ οὐδενί, κ.τ.λ. “For the Demiurge had been taught by Sophia that he was not the only God and that beside him there was none other, as he had thought; but through Sophia’s teaching he knew better. For he had been instructed and initiated by Sophia, and had been taught the great mystery of the Father and of the Aeons, and had declared it to none”—in support of which the statement in Exodus (vi. 2, 3) about being the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but “by my name Jehovah was I not known unto them” is quoted. The identification by Valentinus of the Demiurge with the God of the Jews is therefore complete.

[398]. σφάλματα “stumblings,” Hippolytus, loc. cit.

[399]. Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk vi. c. 35, p. 295, Cruice. I have taken what seems on comparison to be the original form of Valentinus’ teaching. In the same chapter, Hippolytus tells us that his followers were divided on the question of the composition of the body of Jesus—the Italic School led by Heracleon and Ptolemy averring that it was psychic and that at His baptism only the πνεῦμα came upon Him as a dove, while the Oriental School of Axionicus and Bardesanes maintained that it was pneumatic from the first. Cf. n. 2, p. [116] infra.

[400]. Amélineau, Gnost. Ég. p. 226. The Excerpta Theodoti, on which he relies, says (fr. 78): Μέχρι τοῦ βαπτίσματος οὖν ἡ εἱμαρμένη, φασίν, ἀληθής· μετὰ δὲ τοῦτο οὐκ ἔτι ἀληθεύουσιν οἱ ἀστρολόγοι. Ἔστι δὲ οὐ τὸ λουτρὸν μόνον τὸ ἐλευθεροῦν, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἡ γνῶσις τίνες ἦμεν, τί γεγόναμεν, ποῦ ἦμεν, ἢ ποῦ ἐνεβλήθημεν, ποῦ σπεύδομεν, πόθεν λυτρούμεθα, τί γέννησις τί ἀναγέννησις. “Until baptism then, they say the destiny [he is talking of that which is foretold by the stars] holds good; but thereafter the astrologers’ predictions are no longer unerring. For the [baptismal] font not only sets us free, but is also the Gnosis which teaches us what we are, why we have come into being, where we are, or whither we have been cast up, whither we are hastening, from what we have been redeemed, why there is birth, and why re-birth.” For baptism was to the Valentinian initiation, and a mystagogue of Eleusis would have expressed himself no differently.

[401]. Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 1, § 13, pp. 60-62, Harvey; Amélineau, Gnost. Ég. p. 226, and Excerpta Theodoti there quoted.

[402]. Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk VI. c. 35, pp. 295, 296, Cruice: Ὁ δὲ Ἰησοῦς, ὁ καινὸς ἄνθρωπος, ἀπὸ Πνεύματος Ἁγίου [καὶ τοῦ Ὑψίστου], τουτέστι τῆς Σοφίας καὶ τοῦ Δημιουργοῦ, ἵνα τὴν μὲν πλάσιν καὶ κατασκευὴν τοῦ σώματος αὐτοῦ ὁ Δημιουργὸς καταρτίσῃ, τὴν δὲ οὐσίαν αὐτοῦ τὸ Πνεῦμα παράσχῃ τὸ Ἅγιον, καὶ γένηται Λόγος ἐπουράνιος ἀπὸ τῆς Ὀγδοάδος γεννηθεὶς διὰ Μαρίας. “But Jesus, the new man, [has come into being] by the Holy Spirit and by the Highest, that is by Sophia and the Demiurge, so that the Demiurge might put together the mould and constitution of His body and that the Holy Spirit might provide its substance; and that He might become the Heavenly Logos ... when born of Mary.” According to this, the body of Jesus was a “psychic” or animal one; yet Hippolytus says immediately afterwards (p. 296, Cruice), that it was on this that there was a division between the Italic and the Oriental Schools of Valentinians, the former with Heracleon and Ptolemy saying that the body of Jesus was an animal one, the Holy Spirit coming on Him as a dove at His baptism, while the Orientals with Axionicus and Bardesanes maintained that the body of the Saviour was pneumatic or spiritual, “the Holy Spirit or Sophia and the power of the Highest or Demiurgic art having come upon Mary, in order that what was given to Mary might be put into form.” Apparently Valentinus was willing to call the God of the Jews Ὕψιστος or “Highest,” which M. Cumont thinks was his name in Asia Minor.

[403]. With the exception of that of St John, since the part of the Pistis Sophia which it is suggested is by Valentinus does not quote it. His followers, however, knew of it, as in the Excerpta Theodoti the opening verse τὸ ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ Λόγος καὶ ὁ Λόγος ἦν παρὰ τὸν Θεὸν, καὶ Θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος is quoted with the comments of οἱ ἀπὸ τοῦ Οὐαλεντίνου on it. Cf. Amélineau, Gnost. Ég. p. 209, where the passage is given in n. 4.

[404]. Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 1, § 13, pp. 60-62, Harvey: Εἰσὶ δὲ οἱ λέγοντες... Ἔπαθε δὲ λοιπὸν κατ’ αὐτοὺς ὁ ψυχικὸς Χριστός, καὶ ὁ ἐκ τῆς οἰκονομίας κατεσκευασμένος μυστηριωδῶς, ἵν’ ἐπιδείξῃ [δι’] αὐτοῦ ἡ μήτηρ τοῦ ἄνω Χριστοῦ, ἐκείνου τοῦ ἐπεκταθέντος τῷ Σταυρῷ, καὶ μορφώσαντος τὴν Ἀχαμὼθ μόρφωσιν τὴν κατ’ οὐσίαν· πάντα γὰρ ταῦτα τύπους ἐκείνων εἶναι λέγουσι. “And there are some” (probably the Anatolic or Oriental School is meant) “who say.... And further the animal Christ, He who had been mysteriously formed by dispensation, suffered so that the Mother might show forth through Him the type of the Christ on high, of him who is extended by Stauros, and gave shape to Achamoth as regards substance: for they say that all things here are the types of others there.”

[405]. Tertullian, adv. Valentinianos, c. IV.

[406]. That is, not a martyr, but one who had suffered for the faith without losing his life.

[407]. Irenaeus, Bk III. c. 4, § 1, vol. II. p. 17, Harvey; Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. Bk IV. c. 11. Cf. Amélineau, Gnost. Ég. p. 170.

[408]. Tertullian, de Praescpt. c. XXX. Amélineau, Gnost. Ég. p. 175, objects to this.

[409]. Amélineau, Gnost. Ég. p. 172, n. 1; ibid. p. 175.

[410]. Epiphanius, Pan., Haer. XXXI. c. 2.

[411]. Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk VI. c. 35, p. 296, Cruice.

[412]. Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 1, § 2, p. 13, Harvey.

[413]. See n. 2, p. [116] supra.

[414]. Irenaeus, Prooem. p. 4, Harvey.

[415]. Clem. Alex. Strom. Bk IV. c. 9.

[416]. Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk VI. c. 38, p. 302, Cruice. So Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 5, § 2, p. 101, Harvey. This appears to be hyperbole rather than dualism.

[417]. Amélineau, Gnost. Ég. p. 189.

[418]. Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk VI. c. 35, p. 296, Cruice.

[419]. Albîrûnî, Chronology of Ancient Nations, ed. Sachau, 1879, pp. 27, 189.

[420]. De Faye, Intro. etc. p. 105, n. 1; Tertullian, de Carne Christi, c. XVI.

[421]. See Hort, Bardaisan, in Dict. Christian Biog.

[422]. Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. Bk IV. c. 30, says that Bar Daisan was first a Valentinian and afterwards recanted, “but did not entirely wipe away the filth of his old heresy.”

[423]. Rather a suspect name for a hymn writer.

[424]. Ephrem Syrus’ own date is given as 370 A.D., in Dict. Christian Biog. s.h.n.

[425]. See n. 3, p. [117] supra.

[426]. Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 5, § 1, p. 98, Harvey.

[427]. See n. 2, p. [118] supra.

[428]. This may have been due either to their Egyptian extraction, or to the necessity of putting the matter in a way that would be intelligible to their Egyptian disciples. Cf. Naville, Old Egyptian Faith, 1909, where he says that the Egyptian way of expressing abstract ideas is by metaphors. Their ancestors, the Egyptians of the early Dynasties, when they wanted to describe how gods of both sexes came forth from one single male deity, did so by means of a very coarse image. See Budge, Papyrus of Nesi-Amsu, Archaeologia, vol. LII. (1890), pp. 440, 441. Cf. same author, Hieratic Papyri in B.M.

[429]. Courdaveaux, R.H.R. Jan.-Fev. 1892, p. 293 and n. 7. Mgr Duchesne, op. cit. pp. 244, 245, agrees that Clement looked upon the Son as a creature only. Nor does there seem much difference between Valentinus’ view of the relation between the Demiurge and the Unknown Father, and Clement’s remarks about the Son whom he calls timeless and unbegotten and says that it is from Him that we must learn the “remote cause the Father of the Universe”: Strom. Bk VII. c. 1. Cf. Justin Martyr, c. Trypho. c. 56.

[430]. R.H.R. Jan.-Fev. 1891, p. 27. Tertullian’s own heresy was of course Montanism. Harnack, Hist. of Dogma, Eng. ed., II. pp. 257, 258, says indeed that Hippolytus’ own views of the Trinity coincide with those of Valentinus and are a relic of polytheism.

[431]. Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk VI. c. 29, pp. 280, 281, Cruice.

[432]. 2 John iv. 16. So Ἀγάπη “Love” is made the summit of the universe in the Ophite Diagram. See Chap. VIII supra.

[433]. Neander, Ch. Hist. vol. II. p. 90.

[434]. Heracleon, quoted by Origen in Commentaries on St John, Bk X. c. 19.

[435]. Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk VI. c. 36, pp. 297, 298, Cruice.

[436]. Ibid. loc. cit. p. 298, Cruice.

[437]. Clem. Alex. Strom. Bk II. c. 20.

[438]. Amélineau, Gnost. Ég. p. 230; Neander, Ch. Hist. vol. II. p. 94.

[439]. Neander, op. et loc. cit. p. 150 and note, says Clement of Alexandria declares that while Marcion wished to found a Church, the other Gnostics endeavoured to found schools (διατριβαί) only. Clem. Alex. Strom. Bk VII. c. 15, seems to be the passage referred to; but in the present state of the text it may be doubted whether it will bear the construction Neander puts upon it.

[440]. Irenaeus, Bk I. Prooem. p. 4, Harvey.

[441]. Cf. Renan, L’Église Chrétienne, p. 165. The manner in which the Valentinians tried to make converts to their doctrines within the Church is described by Irenaeus, Bk III. c. 15, § 2, pp. 78, 80, Harvey, and Tertullian, adv. Valentinianos, c. 1.

[442]. Renan, L’Église Chrétienne, pp. 152, 153, for references.

[443]. Tertullian, de Pudicitia, and Pseudo Cyprian, de Glor. Martyr. passim.

[444]. See [Chap. VII], n. 1, p. [8] supra.

[445]. Tertullian, Scorpiace, c. 1.

[446]. Gibbon, Decline and Fall, Bury’s ed. vol. II. p. 13. Cf. what Irenaeus, Βk I. c. 1, § 8, p. 36, Harvey, says as to the high price charged by the Valentinians for their teaching.

[447]. Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk IV. c. 4, §§ 1-15.

[448]. Irenaeus, Bk I. cc. 7-8 passim, pp. 114-156, Harvey.

[449]. Thus he says that the Dove signifies Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, because Α and Ω, like περιστερά “dove,” have the numerical value of 801.

[450]. A similar miracle is performed by the risen Jesus in the Bruce Papyrus. See [Chap. X] infra.

[451]. Verse:

a.

Φῶς πατρικὸν ποθέουσα, σύναιμε, σύνευνε, σοφή μου,

λούτροις χρεισαμένη Χ(ρειστο)ῦ μύρον ἄφθιτον, ἁγνὸν,

Αἰώνων ἔσπευσας ἀθρ[ῆ]σαι θεῖα πρόσωπα,

βουλῆς τῆς μεγάλης μέγαν ἄγγελον, υἱὸν ἀληθῆ,

[εἰς ν]υμφῶνα μολοῦσα καὶ εἰς [κόλπ]ους ἀνόρουσα[?]

[Αἰώνων πα]τρικοὺς κ[αὶ]....

b.

Οὐκ ἔσχεν κοινὸν βιότου [τ]έλος ἥδε θανοῦσα·

κάτθανε καὶ ζώει καὶ ὁρᾷ φάος ἄφθιτον ὄντως·

ζώει μὲν ζωοῖσι, θανὲν δὲ θανοῦσιν ἀληθῶς.

γαῖα, τί θαυμάζεις νέκυος γένος; ὴ πεφόβηται;

(Boeckh’s) C. I. G. 9595a, t. I. and p. 594.

“Longing for the light of the Father, partner of my blood, partner of my bed, O my wise one!

Anointed at the font with the incorruptible and pure myrrh of Christ,

Thou hast hastened to behold the divine faces of the Aeons, [and]

The Great Angel of the Great Council, the true Son.

Thou hast gone to the nuptial couch and hast hurried to the fatherly bosoms of the Aeons

And....

Though dying, she has not suffered the common end of life,

She is dead, and yet lives and actually beholds the light incorruptible,

To the living she is alive, and dead only to those really dead.

O Earth, why dost thou wonder at this new kind of shade? or dost thou fear it?”

This was engraved on a cippus of white marble found about three miles from Rome in the Via Latina and is now in the Kircher Museum. Renan’s translation is given in Marc Aurèle, p. 147. That the lady’s name was Flavia seems evident from the acrostic contained in the first verse. She must also have been a pneumatic or spiritual from her husband’s confident expectation that she would be raised to the Heavenly Jerusalem and by his assertion of her deathlessness. Hence it may be inferred that Valentinus’ disciples even when of the highest spiritual rank were allowed to marry. Cf. Clem. Alex. Strom. Bk III. c. 17. The name “Angel of the Great Council” is applied to Christ by Justin Martyr (c. Tryph. c. 126) who says that He is so called by Ezekiel. The passage does not appear in the Canon.

[452]. Matter, Hist. du Gnosticisme, t. II. p. 126, quoting St Jerome.

[453]. Epiphanius, Haer. XXXIII. c. 3, pp. 401-413, Oehler. Cf. “the Elect Lady” to whom 2 John is addressed.

[454]. It should be remembered that Valentinus had been dead some 50 years when Irenaeus and Hippolytus wrote.

[455]. Amélineau, Gnost. Ég. Chap. V., pp. 281-320 passim.

[456]. Julian, Ep. 43, tells Hecebolius that the Arians of Edessa, “puffed up by their riches,” have maltreated the Valentinians, and that he has therefore ordered the confiscation of the estates and treasure of the Church of Edessa. It is doubtful whether the edict can have been enforced before the emperor’s death abrogated it.

[457]. We get at a sort of minimum date for its persistence from the career of St Ambrose, who had been a Valentinian in his youth (see Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. Bk VI. c. 18), and was made bishop of Milan in 374 A.D., he being then 34 years old. The sect therefore had adherents in Italy about 360 A.D.

[458]. It may be news to some that an attempt has lately been made to revive in Paris the heresy of Valentinus. See the Contemporary Review for May, 1897, or Jules Bois’ Les Petits Religions de Paris, where a full account of the services and hymns of “L’Église Gnostique” is given. Its founder, Jules Doinel, was reconverted to Catholicism some time before his death. Its present head is M. Fabre des Essarts.

[459]. The chapter on Marcion and his doctrines should perhaps in strict chronological order follow on here, as Marcion’s teaching was either contemporary with, or at most, but a few years later than, that of Valentinus. Cf. Salmon in Dict. Christian Biog. s.v. Marcion, Valentinus. But the earliest documents in the Pistis Sophia are, as will be seen, possibly by Valentinus himself, and, as all of them are closely connected with his doctrine, it seemed a pity to postpone their consideration.

[460]. W. E. Crum, Catalogue of the Coptic MS. in the Brit. Mus., 1905, p. 173, n. 2, says that it was bought at the sale of Askew’s effects for £10. 10s. 0d., and that Askew himself bought it from a bookseller.

[461]. H. Hyvernat, Album de Paléographie Copte, Paris, 1888.

[462]. Matter, Hist. du Gnost. t. II. pp. 39-43, 347-348, and t. III. pp. 368-371.

[463]. See the present writer’s article “Some Heretic Gospels” in the Scottish Review for July, 1893, where the MSS. treated of in this chapter and their divisions are described in detail. Schmidt, Koptisch-gnostische Schriften, Bd I. p. 14, speaks of this “Codex Askewianus” as “eine Miszellenhandschrift.”

[464]. Except where otherwise specified, subsequent references here to Pistis Sophia (in Italics) are to the first 253 pages of the Coptic MS. only.

[465]. Cf. the ἐσώτερον τοῦ καταπετάσματος “within the veil” of Heb. vi. 19. For other instances of its use in this sense see Crum, Cat. of the Coptic MSS. in the Brit. Mus. p. 255, n. 1; and Clem. Alex. Strom. Bk V. c. 6. For the dove, Mr F. C. Conybeare, in a paper on the subject read before the Society of Historical Theology in Dec. 1892 (see Academy of 3rd Dec. 1892), said that the dove was “the recognised symbol of the Holy Spirit or Logos in the allegorizing theology of the Alexandrine Jews at the beginning of the 1st century A.D.,” and quoted several passages from Philo in support. Cf. Origen, cont. Cels. Bk I. c. 31. But it was also the emblem, perhaps the totem-animal, of the great Asiatic goddess who, under the name of Astarte or Aphrodite, was worshipped as the Mater viventium or “Mother of all Living,” with whose worship the serpent was also connected. It was doubtless to this that the text “Be ye wise as serpents, harmless as doves” refers. Both serpents and doves figure largely in the Mycenaean and Cretan worship of the goddess. See Ronald Burrows, Discoveries in Crete, 1907, pp. 137, 138, and Index for references. In later Greek symbolism the dove was sacred to the infernal Aphrodite or Persephone whose name of Φερρεφάττα or Φερσεφάττα has been rendered “she who bears the dove.” See de Chanot, “Statues Iconiques de Chypre” in Gazette Archéologique, 1878, p. 109.

[466]. Pistis Sophia, p. 152, Copt. This metaphor is first met with in Philo, Quaest. in Genesim, Bk I. c. 53, who declares that the “coats of skin” of Gen. iii, 21 are the natural bodies with which the souls of the protoplasts were clothed. It was a favourite figure of speech with the Alexandrian Jewish writers. So in the Ascensio Isaiae, c. IV. 16, 17: “But the saints will come with the Lord with their garments which are now stored up on high in the seventh heaven: with the Lord will they come, whose spirits are clothed.... And afterwards they will turn themselves upward in their garments, and their body will be left in this world.” Cf. Charles, Ascension of Isaiah, pp. 34, 35, and Eschatology (Jowett Lectures), pp. 399 sqq., where he says that this was also the teaching of St Paul.

[467]. The word Σωτήρ, which here as elsewhere in the book appears without any Coptic equivalent, evidently had a peculiar signification to the Valentinian Gnostics. Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 1, § 1, p. 12, Harvey, says that it was the name they gave to Jesus oὐδὲ γὰρ κύριον ὀνομάζειν αὐτὸν θέλουσι “for they do not choose to call Him Lord.” In the later part of the book, the document called Mέρoς τευχῶν Σωτῆρος (p. 253, Copt.) says that “he is saviour and ὰχώρητος (i.e. not to be confined in space), who finds the words of the mysteries and the words of the Third Receptacle which is within (i.e. the inmost of the three) and excelleth them all.” From which it would appear that the chief qualification of a saviour in the eyes of the later Valentinians was that he was not restricted to his special place in the universe, but could visit at will the worlds below him. We seem therefore to be already getting near the Manichaean idea of Burkhans (messengers or Buddhas) who are sent into the world for its salvation. Cf. [Chapter XIII] infra.

[468]. So that Judas Iscariot received a super-excellent soul as well as the other eleven, unless we are to suppose that his successor and substitute Matthias was one of those chosen from the beginning. It is curious that neither in this nor in any other Valentinian document is there any allusion to the treason of Judas. The phrase “Archons of the aeons” means, as will be seen later, the rulers of the twelve signs of the Zodiac.

[469]. The “Sphere,” here as elsewhere in the book, means the sphere of the visible firmament, which is below that of Heimarmene or Destiny.

[470]. Τhis παρθένος τοῦ φωτός or Virgin of Light appears here, I think, for the first time in any Gnostic document, although she may have been known to the Valentinians. See Irenaeus, Bk II. c. 47, § 2, p. 368, Harvey. She is, perhaps, a lower analogue of Sophia Without, and is represented as seated in or near the material sun which is said to give its light in its “true form” only in her τόπος or place, which is 10,000 times more luminous than that of the Great Propator or Forefather mentioned later (Pistis Sophia, p. 194, Copt.). Her function seems to be the “judging” of the souls of the dead, which does not apparently involve any weighing of evidence, but merely the examination of them to see what “mysteries” they have received in previous incarnations, which will determine the bodies in which they are reincarnated or their translation to higher spheres (ibid. pp. 239, 292). She also places in the soul a power which returns to her, according to the Μέρος τευχῶν Σωτῆρος, on the death of its possessor (ibid. p. 284, Copt.), thereby discharging the functions assigned in the last book of Plato’s Republic to Lachesis. She is also on the same authority (i.e. the Μ. τ. Σ.) one of the rulers of the disk of the sun and of that of the moon (ibid. pp. 340-341, Copt.), and her place is one of the “places of the Middle” and is opposite to the kingdom of Adamas, which is called the “head of the aeons” (ibid. p. 236, Copt.). She reappears in Manichaeism and it is said in the Acta Archelai that at the destruction of the world she will pass into “the ship” of the moon along with Jesus and other powers where she will remain until the whole earth is burnt up (c. XIII. p. 21 of Hegemonius, Acta Archelai, Beeson’s ed., Leipzig, 1906, p. 21). In the Turfan texts (F. W. K. Müller, Handschriften-Reste in Estrangelo Schrift aus Turfan, III. Teil, Berlin, 1904, p. 77) appears a fragment of a prayer in which is invoked yîšô kanîgrôšanâ which Dr Müller translates Ἰησοῦς παρθένος τοῦ φωτός, “Jesus, Virgin of Light”; but it is possible that there is some mistake in the reading.

[471]. Barbelo is a name very frequently met with in the earlier heresiologists. Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 26, §§ 1, 2, pp. 221-226, Harvey, declares that there was a sect of Simonians called Barbeliotae “or Naassenes” who suppose “a certain indestructible (the Latin version says ‘never-ageing’) Aeon in a living virgin spirit whom they call Barbelo (masc.),” and gives an account of a string of other aeons issuing not from, but at the prayer of, this Barbelo, which is far from clear in the present state of the text. The sect appears, from what can be made out of his description, to have resembled the Ophites, of which it may have been a branch. Hippolytus, however, says nothing of them, and the account of Epiphanius (Haer. XXV. and XXVI., Vol. II, pt 1, pp. 160, 184), Oehler, is untrustworthy, inasmuch as he assigns the worship of Barbelo to two sects, one of which he calls Nicolaitans and the other Gnostics simply. To both of them he attributes after his manner unimaginably filthy rites, and it is plain from his making Barbelo the mother of Jaldabaoth and giving her a seat in the eighth heaven that he confuses her wilfully or otherwise with the Sophia of the Ophites. Her place in the system of the Pistis Sophia will be described in the text. The name is said by Harvey to be derived from the Syriac Barba elo, the Deity in Four or God in Tetrad, and the derivation is approved by Hort (Dict. of Christian Biog. s.h.n.). It appears more likely, however, that it is to be referred to the Hebrew root בבל “Babel” or confusion, a derivation which Hort also mentions. In Irenaeus’ Greek text the name is spelt βαρβηλὼ, in the Latin “Barbelo” with an accusative “Barbelon,” and in Epiphanius βαρβηλὼ and βαρβήρω. If we might alter this last into βαρβαριωθ, we might see it in a great: number of magic spells of the period. Cf. Wessely, Ephesia Grammata, Wien, 1886, pp. 26, 28, 33, 34.

[472]. Pistis Sophia, p. 16, Copt. The five words are zama, zama, ôzza, rachama, ôzai. Whatever they may mean, we may be quite sure that they can never contain with their few letters the three pages or so of text which are given as their interpretation. It is possible that the letters are used acrostically like the A G L A, i.e. ניבר לעולם אדני (? Ahih ? אהיה) אתה Ate Gibor Lailam Adonai, “The mighty Adonai for ever” (or “thou art the mighty and eternal Lord”) commonly met with in mediaeval magic. Cf. Peter de Abano, Heptameron, seu Elementa Magica, Paris, 1567, p. 563; or, for other examples, F. Barrett, The Magus, 1801, Bk II. pp. 39, 40. The notable feature in these mysterious words is the quantity of Zetas or ζ’s that they contain which points to the use of some sort of table like that called by Cabalists ziruph, or a cryptogram of the aaaaa, aaaab, kind. It should be noticed that Coptic scribes were often afflicted with what has been called Betacism or the avoidance of the letter Beta or β by every means, which frequently led to the substitution for it of ζ as in the case of Jaldabaoth = Ιαλδαζαω given above ([Chap. VIII], n. 3, p. [46] supra).

[473]. This idea of certain powers being the members or “limbs” of him from whom they issue recurs all through the Pistis Sophia. Cf. especially p. 224, Copt., where it is said that the χωρήματα or “receptacles” of the Ineffable go forth from his last limb. It is probably to be referred to the conception of the Supreme Being as the Man κατ’ ἐξοχήν, which we have seen current among the Ophites. See [Chap. VIII], n. 2, p. [38] supra. That the ancient Egyptians used the same expression concerning their own gods and especially Ra, see Moret, “Le Verbe créateur et révélateur,” R.H.R., Mai-Juin, 1909, p. 257. Cf. Amélineau, Gnosticisme Égyptien, p. 288. So Naville, Old Egyptian Faith, p. 227.

[474]. That is to say, their names make up his name as letters do a word. So in the system of Marcus referred to in [Chap. IX] supra, Irenaeus (Bk I. c. 8, § 11, p. 146, Harvey) explains that the name of Jesus (Ἰησοῦς) which might be uttered is composed of six letters, but His unutterable name of twenty-four, because the names of the first Tetrad of Ἄρρητος (Bythos), Σιγή, Πατὴρ (Monogenes or Nous) and Ἀλήθεια contain that number of letters. See also § 5 of same chapter. Those who wish to understand the system are recommended to read the whole of the chapter quoted. As Irenaeus has the sense to see, there is no reason why the construction from one root of names founded on the principle given should not go on for ever.

[475]. This is probably either the Horos or Stauros that we have seen brought into being in the teaching of Valentinus as a guard to the Pleroma, or, as is more probable, an antitype of the same power in the world immediately above ours. That there was more than one Horos according to the later Valentinians appears plain from the words of Irenaeus above quoted (see [Chap. IX], n. 1, p. [105] supra). Probably each world had its Horos, or Limit, who acted as guard to it on its completion. That in this world, the Cross, personified and made pre-existent, fulfils this office seems evident from the Gospel of Peter, where it is described as coming forth from the Sepulchre with Jesus (Mem. Miss. Archéol. du Caire, 1892, t. IX. fasc. 1, v. 10). Cf. too, Clem. Alex. Paedagogus, Bk III. c. 12, and Strom. Bk II. c. 20.

[476]. Ὁ μηνευτος. The word is not known in classical Greek (but cf. μηνυτής “a revealer”), and appears to have its root in μήν “the moon,” as the measure of the month. From the Coptic word here translated “Precept,” we may guess it to be a personification of the Jewish Law or Torah which, according to the Rabbis, before the creation of the world existed in the heavens. Later in the book it is said that it is by command of this power that Jeû places the aeons (p. 26, Copt.); that the souls of those who receive the mysteries of the light (i.e. the psychics) will have precedence in beatitude over those who belong to the places of the First Precept (p. 196, Copt.); that all the orders of beings of the Third χὠρημα are below him (p. 203, Copt.); and that he is “cut into seven mysteries,” which may mean that his name is spelled with seven letters (p. 219, Copt.).

[477]. Χάραγμαι. Are these the letters mentioned in last note?

[478]. Πρεσβευτής, properly, “ambassador” or “agent.” Doubtless a prototype of our sun. Elsewhere in the book, Jesus tells His disciples that He brought forth from Himself “at the beginning” power (not a power), which He cast into the First Precept, “and the First Precept cast part of it into the Great Light, and the Great Light cast part of that which he received into the Five Parastatae, the last of whom breathed part of that which he received into the Kerasmos or Confusion” (p. 14, Copt.). The Great Light is also called the Χάραγμα of the Light, and is said to have remained without emanation (p. 219, Copt.).

[479]. Παραστάται, “Comrades” or “witnesses” or “helpers.” They can here hardly be anything else but the Five Planets. It is said later that it was the last Parastates who set Jeû and his five companions in the “Place of the Right Hand” (p. 193, Copt.). When the world is destroyed, Jesus is to take the perfect souls into this last Parastates where they are to reign with him (p. 230, Copt.) for 1000 years of light which are 365,000 of our years (p. 243, Copt.). Προηγούμενος “Forerunner” does not seem to occur in classical Greek.

[480]. We hear nothing more definite of these Five Trees, but they appear again in Manichaeism, and are mentioned in the Chinese treatise from Tun-huang, for which see [Chap. XIII] infra.

[481]. This is a most puzzling expression and seems to have baffled the scribe, as he speaks of them, when he comes to repeat the phrase (p. 216, Copt.), as the “Twin Saviours,” which is a classical epithet of the Dioscuri. In Pharaonic Egypt, Shu and Tefnut the pair of gods who were first brought into being by the Creator were sometimes called “The Twins.” See Naville, Old Egyptian Faith, p. 120. Cf. p. [171] infra.

[482]. It is evident from the context that we here begin the enumeration of the Powers of the Left, who are hylic or material and therefore the least worthy of the inhabitants of the heavens. According to Irenaeus, the Valentinians held that all of them were doomed to destruction. Τριῶν ὠν ὄντων, τὸ μὲν ὑλικὸν, ὃ καὶ ἀριστερὸν καλοῦσι, κατὰ ἀνάγκην ἀπὸλλυσθαι λέγουσιν, ἅτε μηδεμίαν ἐπιδέξασθαι πνοὴν ἀφθαρσίας δυνάμενον (Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 1, § 11, p. 51, Harvey). “There being three forms of existences, they say that the hylic, which they call the left hand, must be destroyed, inasmuch as it cannot receive any breath of incorruption.” So in the Bruce Papyrus to be presently mentioned, the “part of the left” is called the land of Death. At their head stands “the Great Unseen Propator,” who throughout the Pistis Sophia proper is called by this title only, and occupies the same place with regard to the left that Iao does in respect of the middle, and Jeû of the right. In the Μέρος τευχῶν Σωτῆρος (p. 359, Copt.) he is called by the name ἀγραμμαχαμαρεχ which frequently appears in the Magic Papyri. It is there spelt indifferently ακραμνικαμαρι, ακραμμαχαρι, ακραμμαχαμαρει, ακραμμαχαχαχαρι, and in a Latin inscription on a gold plate, acramihamari (see Wessely, Ephesia Grammata, p. 22, for references), which last may be taken to be the more usual pronunciation. One is rather tempted to see in the name a corruption of ἀγραμματέον in the sense of “which cannot be written,” but I can find no authority for such a use of the word. As the ruler of the material Cosmos he might be taken for the Cosmocrator who, as we have seen, is called by Valentinus Diabolos or the Devil (but see n. 1, p. [152] infra). Yet he cannot be wholly evil like Beelzebuth for it is said in the text (p. 41, Copt.) that he and his consort Barbelo sing praises to the Powers of the Light. So in the Μέρος τευχῶν Σωτῆρος (p. 378, Copt.) he is represented as begging for purification and holiness when the Great Name of God is uttered. It is plain also from the statements in the text (pp. 43, 44, Copt.) that in the Pistis Sophia he, Barbelo, and the Αὐθάδης or Arrogant Power make up a triad called the great τριδυναμεῖς or “Triple Powers” from whom are projected the powers called the “Twenty-four Invisibles.” In another document of the same MS. (p. 361, Copt.) a power from him is said to be bound in the planet Saturn.

[483]. This Εἱμαρμένη or “Destiny” is the sphere immediately above our firmament. It is evidently so called, because on passing through it the soul on its way to incarnation receives the Moira or impress of its own destiny, of which it cannot afterwards rid itself except by the grace of the mysteries or Valentinian sacraments. Cf. [Chap. IX], n. 3, p. [115] supra.

[484]. Ἄρρητος. Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 5, § 1, p. 99, Harvey. Innominabilis, Tertullian, adv. Valentinianos, c. 37. So Clem. Alex. Strom. Bk V. c. 10, says that God is ineffable, being incapable of being expressed even in His own power.

[485]. Χωρηματα: τόποι.

[486]. That [i.e. the First] mystery knoweth why there emanated all the places which are in the receptacle of the Ineffable One and also all which is in them, and why they went forth from the last limb of the Ineffable One.... These things I will tell you in the emanation of the universe. Pist. Soph. p. 225, Copt.

[487]. Ibid. p. 222, Copt.

[488]. Ibid. p. 127, Copt.

[489]. See [Chap. IX], pp. [121], [122] supra.

[490]. Heb. vi. 19.

[491]. p. 203, Copt. Why there should be 24, when the dodecad or group of Aeons in the world above was only 12, it is difficult to say. But Hippolytus supplies a sort of explanation when he says (op. cit. Bk VI. c. 33, p. 292, Cruice): Ταῦτά ἐστιν ἃ λέγουσιν· ἔτι [δὲ] πρὸς τούτοις, ἀριθμητικὴν ποιούμενοι τὴν πᾶσαν αὐτῶν διδασκαλίαν, ὡς προεῖπον [τοὺς] ἐντὸς Πληρώματος Αἰῶνας τριάκοντα πάλιν ἐπιπροβεβληκέναι αὐτοῖς κατὰ ἀναλογίαν Αἰῶνας ἄλλους, ἵν’ ᾖ τὸ Πλήρωμα ἐν ἀριθμῷ τελείῳ συνηθροισμένον. Ὡς γὰρ οἱ Πυθαγορικοὶ διεῖλον εἰς δώδεκα καὶ τριάκοντα καὶ ἑξήκοντα, καὶ λεπτὰ λεπτῶν εἰσὶν ἐκείνοις, δεδήλωται· οὕτως οὗ τοι τὰ ἐντὸς Πληρώματος ὑποδιαιροῦσιν. “This is what they say. But besides this, they make their whole teaching arithmetical, since they say that the thirty Aeons within the Pleroma again projected by analogy other Aeons, so that thereby the Pleroma may be gathered together in a perfect number. For the manner in which the Pythagoreans divide [the cosmos] into 12, 30, and 60 parts, and each of these into yet more minute ones, has been made plain” [see op. cit. Bk VI. c. 28, p. 279, where Hippolytus tells us how Pythagoras divided each Sign of the Zodiac into 30 parts “which are days of the month, these last into 60 λεπτὰ, and so on”]. “In this way do they [the Valentinians] divide the things within the Pleroma.” Cf. Μέρος τευχῶν Σωτῆρος p. 364, Copt. In another book of the Philosophumena (Bk IV. c. 7 Περὶ τῆς ἀριθμετικῆς τέχνης) he explains how the Pythagoreans derived infinity from a single principle by a succession of odd and even or male and female numbers, in connection with which he quotes Simon Magus (op. cit. p. 132, Cruice). The way this was applied to names he shows in the chapter Περὶ μαθηματικῶν (op. cit. Βk IV. c. 11, pp. 77 sqq., Cruice) which is in fact a description of what in the Middle Ages was called Arithmomancy, or divination by numbers.

[492]. p. 224, Copt. See also p. 241, Copt.—a very curious passage where the Ineffable One is called “the God of Truth without foot” (cf. Osiris as a mummy) and is said to live apart from his “members.”

[493]. In the beginning of the Μέρος τευχῶν Σωτῆρος (p. 252, Copt.) it is said of the Ineffable that “there are many members, but one body.” But this statement is immediately followed by another that this is only said “as a pattern (παράδειγμα) and a likeness and a resemblance, but not in truth of shape” (p. 253, Copt.).

[494]. What he does say is that the Ineffable One has two χωρήματα or receptacles and that the second of these is the χώρημα of the First Mystery. It is, I think, probable that an attempt to describe both these χωρήματα is made in one of the documents of the Bruce Papyrus. See pp. [191], [192] infra.

[495]. In addition to the enumeration contained in the so-called interpretation of the mysterious “Five Words,” there appears in the 2nd part of the Pistis Sophia (pp. 206 sqq. Copt.) a long rhapsody in which it is declared that a certain mystery knows why all the powers, stars, and heavenly “places” were made. These are here again set out seriatim, and as the order in the main corresponds with that in the five words translated in the text, it serves as a check upon this last. The order of the powers in the text was given in the article in the Scottish Review before referred to, and, although this was written 20 years ago, I see no occasion to alter it.

[496]. It is the “last Parastates” who places Jeû and his companion in “the place of those who belong to the right hand according to the arrangement (i.e. οἰκονομία) of the Assembly of the Light which is in the Height of the Rulers of the Aeons and in the universes (κοσμοὶ) and every race which is therein” (p. 193, Copt.). A later revelation is promised as to these, but in the meantime it is said that Jeû emanated from the chosen or pure (εἰλικρινής) light of the first of the Five Trees (loc. cit.).

[497]. See nn. 1 and 3, p. [141] supra. As has been said, it is difficult not to see in this “1st Precept” a personification of the Torah or Jewish Law.

[498]. See n. 3, p. [146] supra.

[499]. See n. 2, p. [136] supra.

[500]. So Secundus, Valentinus’ follower, taught according to Hippolytus (v. [Chap. ΙΧ] supra) “that there is a right and a left tetrad, i.e. light and darkness.” This may be taken to mean that the constitution of the light-world was repeated point for point in the world of darkness. The middle world is of course that where light and darkness mingle.

[501]. Jeû is generally called the ἐπίσκοπος or overseer of the Light. He it is who has placed the Rulers of the Aeons so that they always “behold the left” (p. 26, Copt.). He is also said to have bound “in the beginning” the rulers of the Aeons and of Destiny and of the Sphere in their respective places (p. 34, Copt.), and that each and every of them will remain in the τάξις or order and walk in the δρόμος or course in which he placed them. We also hear in the Pistis Sophia proper of two “books of Jeû” “which Enoch wrote when the First Mystery spoke with him out of the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge in the Paradise of Adam” (p. 246, Copt.). In the first part of the Μέρος τευχῶν Σωτῆρος, however Jeû is described as “the First Man, the ἐπίσκοπος of the Light, and the πρεσβευτής or Ambassador of the First Precept” (p. 322, Copt.); and it is further said in the same book that “the Book of Jeû (not books) which Enoch wrote in Paradise when I (Jesus) spoke with him out of the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge” was placed by His means in “the rock Ararad.” Jesus goes on to say that He placed “Kalapataurôth the ruler who is over Skemmut in which is the foot of Jeû, and he surrounds all rulers and destinies—I placed that ruler to guard the books of Jeû from the Flood and lest any of the rulers should destroy them out of envy” (p. 354, Copt.).

[502]. Melchizidek is very seldom mentioned in the Pistis Sophia, but when he is, it is always as the great παραλήμπτωρ or “inheritor” of the Light (p. 34, Copt.). Jesus describes how he comes among the Rulers of the Aeons at certain times and takes away their light, which he purifies (p. 35, Copt.). He is said to have emanated from the light of the 5th Tree of the Treasure House, as Jeû did from that of the 1st (p. 193, Copt.). In the Μέρος τευχῶν Σωτῆρος, he is called the great παραλημπτής or “receiver” of the Light (p. 292, Copt.). In the 2nd part of the last named document he is called Zorocothora Melchizidek, an epithet which C. W. King in The Gnostics and their Remains translates “light-gatherer.” It is also said in the same 2nd part that “he and Jeû are the two great lights,” and that he is the πρεσβευτής or “Legate” of all the lights which are purified in the Rulers of the Aeons (p. 365, Copt.). We may perhaps see in him and Jeû the antitypes of which the Great Light and the First Precept are the paradigms. Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk VII. c. 36, p. 391, Cruice, says that there was a sect, the followers of one Theodotus, a τραπεζίτης or money-changer, who said that there was “a greatest power named Melchizidek who was greater than Christ.” Pseudo-Tertullian repeats the same story and adds that Melchizidek is “a celestial virtue of great grace,” who does for heavenly angels and virtues what Christ does for men, having made himself “their intercessor and advocate.” See auct. cit. (probably Victorinus of Pettau) Against all Heresies, c. XXIV. p. 279, Oehl. He doubtless founded his opinion on the passage in the Hebrews. The name seems to mean “Holy King” Cf. the “King of Glory” of the Manichaeans, see [Chap. XIII] infra.

[503]. p. 35, Copt.

[504]. He is said to have emanated from the 2nd Tree (p. 193, Copt.) and is nowhere distinctly named. But one may perhaps guess from the order in which he occurs in the 2nd part of the Μέρος τευχῶν Σωτῆρος that his name was Zarazaz, evidently a cryptogram like those mentioned in n. 1, p. [139] supra. It is also said that the Rulers call him “Maskelli after the name of a strong (i.e. male) ruler of their own place (p. 370, Copt.).” This name of Maskelli, sometimes written Maskelli-maskellô, is frequently met with in the Magic Papyri. Cf. Wessely, Ephesia Grammata, p. 28.

[505]. They are said to have emanated from the 3rd and 4th Tree respectively (p. 193, Copt.).

[506]. p. 193, Copt. He is evidently called the Good because there is a wicked Sabaoth sometimes called Sabaoth Adamas, and the Great because there is a Little Sabaoth the Good who seems to act as his messenger. It is this last who takes the power from the Great Sabaoth the Good which afterwards becomes the body of Jesus and “casts it into matter and Barbelo” (p. 127, Copt.). He seems to be set over or in some way identified with what is called the Gate of Life (p. 215, Copt.) both in the Pistis Sophia and the Μέρος τευχῶν Σωτῆρος (p. 292, Copt.).

[507]. p. 12, Copt., where he is oddly enough called the Little Iao the Good, I think by a clerical error. Later he is said to be “the great leader of the middle whom the Rulers call the Great Iao after the name of a great ruler in their own place” (p. 194, Copt.). He is described in the same way in the second part of the Μέρος τευχῶν Σωτῆρος (p. 371, Copt.).

[508]. See last note.

[509]. p. 12, Copt. This “power” is evidently the better part of man’s soul like the Logoi who dwell therein in the passage quoted above from Valentinus, see [Chap. IX], p. [112] supra.

[510]. p. 194, Copt.

[511]. See n. 3, p. [137] supra.

[512]. So the Μέρος τευχῶν Σωτῆρος (p. 321, Copt.).

[513]. The likeness of Mary the Mother and Mary Magdalene to the seven Virgins appears in the translation of Amélineau (Pistis Sophia, Paris, 1895, p. 60). Schwartze (p. 75, Lat.) puts it rather differently. See also Schmidt, K.-G.S. bd. 1, p. 75. The “receivers” of the Virgin of Light are mentioned on p. 292, Copt.

[514]. p. 184, Copt.

[515]. pp. 340, 341, Copt. As ⲒⲞϨ (ioh) is Coptic for the Moon, it is just possible that there may be a kind of pun here on this word and the name Iao. Osiris, whose name was often equated by the Alexandrian Jews with their own divine name Jaho or Jah, as in the Manethonian story of Osarsiph = Joseph, was also considered a Moon-god. Cf. the “Hymn of the Mysteries” given in [Chap. VIII], where he is called “the holy horned moon of heaven.”

[516]. See note 1, p. [138] supra. The Bruce Papyrus (Amélineau, Notice sur le Papyrus Gnostique Bruce, Paris, 1882, p. 220) speaks of the “Thirteenth Aeon, where are the Great Unseen God and the Great Virgin of the Spirit (cf. the παρθενική πνεῦμα of Irenaeus) and the twenty-four emanations of the unseen God.”

[517]. See n. 2, p. [142] supra.

[518]. See [Chapter IX], p. [104] supra.

[519]. p. 116, Copt.

[520]. I suppose it is in view of this maternal aspect of her nature that she is alluded to in the latter part of the Μέρος τευχῶν Σωτῆρος as βαρβηλω βδελλη “Barbelo who gives suck”? Her place, according to the Bruce Papyrus (Amélineau, p. 218), is said to be in the Twelfth Aeon.

[521]. There have been many attempts to make this name mean something else than merely “Faith-Wisdom.” Dulaurier and Renan both tried to read it “πιστὴ Σοφία” “the faithful Wisdom” or “La fidèle Sagesse.” If we had more documents of the style of Simon’s Apophasis, we should probably find that this apposition of two or more nouns in a name was not infrequent, and the case of Ptah-Sokar-Osiris will occur to every Egyptologist. The fact that the name includes the first and last female member of the Dodecad of Valentinus (see p. [101] supra) is really its most plausible explanation.

[522]. This Adamas seems to be an essentially evil power, who wages useless war against the Light on the entry of Jesus into his realm (p. 25, Copt.). His seat is plainly the Twelve Aeons or Zodiac (p. 157, Copt.), and it is said in the Μέρος τευχῶν Σωτῆρος that his “kingdom” is in the τοποι κεφαλης αἰωνων or Places of the head of the Aeons and is opposite the place of the Virgin of Light (p. 336, Copt.). In the second part of the same document (i.e. the μ. τ. σ.) it is said that the rulers of Adamas rebelled, persisting in the act of copulation (συνουσία) and begetting “Rulers and Archangels and Angels and Ministers (λειτουργοί) and Decans” (Δεκανοί), and that thereupon Jeû went forth from the Place of the Right and “bound them in Heimarmene and the Sphere.” We further learn that half the Aeons headed by Jabraoth, who is also once mentioned in the Pistis Sophia proper (p. 128, Copt., and again in the Bruce Papyrus, Amélineau, p. 239), were consequently transferred to another place, while Adamas, now for the first time called Sabaoth Adamas, with the unrepentant rulers are confined in the Sphere to the number of 1800, over whom 360 other rulers bear sway, over whom again are set the five planets Saturn, Mars, Mercury, Venus, and Jupiter (pp. 360, 361, Copt.). All this seems to me to be later than the Pistis Sophia proper, to have been written at a time when belief in astrology was more rife than in Hadrian’s reign, and to owe something to Manichaean influence. The original Adamas, the persecutor of Pistis Sophia herself, seems identifiable with the Diabolos or Cosmocrator of Valentinus, in which case we may perhaps see in the “Great Propator” a merely stupid and ignorant power like the Jaldabaoth of the Ophites and their successors. See p. [163] infra.

[523]. p. 145, Copt. So Irenaeus in his account of the Valentinian doctrines, Bk I. c. 1, p. 12 sqq. I suppose there is an allusion to this in the remark of Jesus to Mary that a year is as a day (p. 243, Copt.). But all the astrology of the time seems to have divided the astronomical day not into 24, but into 12 hours. It was the same with the Manichaeans. See Chavannes and Pelliot, “Un Traité manichéen retrouvé en Chine,” Journal Asiatique, série X, t. XVIII. (Nov.-Dec. 1911), p. 540, n. 4.

[524]. But curiously enough, not the “souls” of fish. So in the Middle Ages, the Manichaeans of Languedoc did not allow their “Perfects” to partake of animal food nor even of eggs, but allowed them fish, because they said these creatures were not begotten by copulation. See Schmidt, Hist. des Cathares, Paris, 1843. Is this one of the reasons why Jesus is called Ἰχθύς?

[525]. This idea of man being made from the tears of the eyes of the heavenly powers is an old one in Egypt. So Maspero explains the well-known sign of the utchat or Eye of Horus as that “qui exprime la matière, le corps du soleil, d’où tous les êtres découlent sous forme de pleurs,” “Les Hypogées Royaux de Thébes,” Ét. Égyptol. II. p. 130. Moret, “Le verbe créateur et révélateur en Égypte,” R. H. R. Mai-Juin, 1909, p. 386, gives many instances from hymns and other ritual documents. It was known to Proclus who transfers it after his manner to Orpheus and makes it into hexameters:

Thy tears are the much-enduring race of men,

By thy laugh thou hast raised up the sacred race of gods.

See Abel’s Orphica, fr. 236.

[526]. See n. 1, p. [148] supra.

[527]. This is, perhaps, to be gathered from the Pistis Sophia, p. 36, Copt. Cf. Μέρος τευχῶν Σωτῆρος, pp. 337-338. In another part of the last-named document, the Moon-ship is described as steered by a male and female dragon (the caduceus of Hermes?) who snatch away the light of the Rulers (p. 360, Copt.).

[528]. This seems to be the passage referred to later by Origen. See n. 2, p. [159] infra.

[529]. The usual epithet or appellation of Osiris Neb-er-tcher = Lord of Totality or the Universe. Cf. Budge, Book of the Dead, passim.

[530]. So in the Ascensio Isaiae, of which Mr Charles says that “we cannot be sure that it existed earlier than the latter half of the 2nd century of our Era,” it is said (Chap. IX, v. 15) “And thus His descent, as you will see, will be hidden even from the heavens, so that it will not be known who He is.” Charles, The Ascension of Isaiah, p. 62. Cf. ibid. pp. 67, 70, 73 and 79.

[531]. pp. 39, 40, Copt. The reference is apparently to the Book of Enoch, c. LXXX. (see Charles, Book of Enoch, pp. 212, 213, and the Epistle of Barnabas, N.T. extra can., c. IV. p. 9, Hilgenfeld). In the Latin version of the last-quoted book, it is assigned to Daniel, which shows perhaps the connection of Enoch with all this quasi-prophetic or apocalyptic literature.

[532]. According to the Valentinian system, his name was Θελητὸς or “the Beloved.” See [Chap. IX], p. [101] supra.

[533]. See [Chap. VIII] supra. Here he occupies a far inferior position to that assigned him by the Ophites. In the Μέρος τευχῶν Σωτῆρος he sinks lower still and becomes merely one of the torturers in hell (p. 382, Copt., κ.τ.λ.). Thus, as is usual in matters of religion, the gods of one age become the fiends of the next. In the Bruce Papyrus (Amélineau, p. 212) he appears as one of the chiefs of the Third Aeon. It is curious, however, to observe how familiar the name must have been to what Origen calls “a certain secret theology,” so that it was necessary to give him some place in every system of Gnosticism. His bipartite appearance may be taken from Ezekiel viii. 2.

[534]. Probably the latter. See what is said about the Outer Darkness in the Μέρος τευχῶν Σωτῆρος, p. 319, Copt. where it is described as “a great dragon whose tail is in his mouth who is without the whole κόσμος and surrounds it.”

[535]. p. 83, Copt. So in the Manichaean legend, the First Man, on being taken captive by Satan, prays seven times to the Light and is delivered from the Darkness in which he is imprisoned. See [Chap. XIII] infra.

[536]. This demon in the shape of a flying arrow seems to be well known in Rabbinic lore. Mr Whinfield in J.R.A.S., April, 1910, pp. 485, 486, describes him as having a head like a calf, with one horn rising out of his forehead like a cruse or pitcher, while to look upon him is certain death to man or beast. His authority seems to be Rapaport’s Tales from the Midrash.

[537]. The basilisk with seven heads seems to be Death. See Gaster, “The Apocalypse of Abraham,” T.S.B.A. vol. IX. pt 1, p. 222, where this is said to be the “true shape” of death. Cf. Kohler, “Pre-Talmudic Haggadah,” J.Q.R., 1895, p. 590. Death, as we have seen in [Chap. IX], p. [107], was in the ideas of Valentinus the creature of the Demiurge. For the dragon, see Whinfield, ubi cit.

[538]. These “three times” are not years. As the Pistis Sophia opens with the announcement that Jesus spent 12 years on earth after the Resurrection, we may suppose that He was then—if the author accepted the traditional view that He suffered at 33—exactly 45 years old, and the “time” would then be a period of 15 years, as was probably the indiction. The descent of the “two vestures” upon Jesus is said (p. 4, Copt.) to have taken place “on the 15th day of the month Tybi” which is the day Clement of Alexandria (Strom. Bk I. c. 21) gives for the birth of Jesus. He says the followers of Basilides gave the same day as that of His baptism.

[539]. Epiphanius, Haer. XXVI. t. II. pt 1, p. 181, Oehler.

[540]. This doctrine of ἑρμηνεία occurs all through the book. The author is trying to make out that well-known passages of both the Old and New Testaments were in fact prophetic utterances showing forth in advance the marvels he narrates. While the Psalms of David quoted by him are Canonical, the Odes of Solomon are the Apocrypha known under that name and quoted by Lactantius (Div. Inst. Bk IV. c. 12). For some time the Pistis Sophia was the only authority for their contents, but in 1909 Dr Rendel Harris found nearly the whole collection in a Syriac MS. of the 16th century. A translation has since been published in Cambridge Texts and Studies, vol. VIII. No. 3, Cambridge, 1912, by the Bishop of Ossory, who shows, as it seems conclusively, that they were the hymns sung by the newly-baptized in the Primitive Church.

[541]. Astrological doctrine first becomes prominent in Gnostic teaching in the Excerpta Theodoti which we owe to Clement of Alexandria. We may therefore put their date about the year 200. This would be after the time of Valentinus himself, but agrees well with what M. Cumont (Astrology and Religion, pp. 96 sqq.) says as to the great vogue which astrology attained in Rome under the Severi. Its intrusion into the Valentinian doctrines is much more marked in the Μέρος τευχῶν Σωτῆρος than in the Pistis Sophia, and more in the Bruce Papyrus than in either.

[542]. See [Chap. VIII], pp. [73], [74] supra.

[543]. Origen, cont. Cels. Bk VI. c. 34.

[544]. Hippolytus ([Chap. IX], p. [92]), speaks of the Jesus of Valentinus as the Joint Fruit of the Pleroma simply. Irenaeus (Bk I. c. 1, p. 23, Harvey) goes into more detail: Καὶ ὑπὲρ τῆς εὐποιΐας ταύτης βουλῇ μιᾷ καὶ γνώμῃ τὸ πᾶν Πλήρωμα τῶν Αἰώνων, συνευδοκοῦντος τοῦ Χριστοῦ καὶ τοῦ Πνεύματος, τοῦ δὲ Πατρὸς αὐτῶν συνεπισφραγιζομένου, ἕνα ἕκαστον τῶν Αἰώνων, ὅπερ εἶχεν ἐν ἑαυτῷ κάλλιστον καὶ ἀνθηρότατον συνενεγκαμένους καὶ ἐρανισαμένους, καὶ ταῦτα ἁρμοδίως πλέξαντας, καὶ ἐμμελῶς ἑνώσαντας, προβαλέσθαι προβλήματα εἰς τιμὴν καὶ δόξαν τοῦ Βυθοῦ, τελειότατον κάλλος τε καὶ ἄστρον τοῦ Πληρώματος, τέλειον καρπὸν τὸν Ἰησοῦν ὃν καὶ Σωτῆρα προσαγορευθῆναι, καὶ Χριστὸν, καὶ Λόγον πατρωνομικῶς καὶ κατὰ [καὶ τὰ] Πάντα, διὰ τὸ ἀπὸ πάντων εἶναι. “Αnd because of this benefit, with one will and opinion, the whole Pleroma of the Aeons, with the consent of Christos and the Spirit, and their Father having set his seal upon the motion, brought together and combined what each of them had in him which was most beautiful and brightest, and wreathing these fittingly together and properly uniting them, they projected a projection to the honour and glory of Bythos, the most perfect beauty and star of the Pleroma, the perfect Fruit Jesus, who is also called Saviour and Christ, and after his Father Logos, and Pan, because He is from all.” Compare with these the words of Colossians ii. 9: ὅτι ἐν αὐτῷ κατοικεῖ πᾶν τὸ πλήρωμα τῆς θεότητος σωματικῶς. “For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.”

[545]. That the Valentinians considered the Dodecad (and a fortiori the Decad) as having a collective entity, and as it were a corporate existence, seems plain from what Hippolytus says in narrating the opinions of Marcus: ταῦτα γὰρ δώδεκα ζώδια φανερώτατα τὴν τοῦ Ἀνθρώπου καὶ τῆς Ἐκκλησίας θυγατέρα δωδεκάδα ἀποσκιάζειν λέγουσι. “For they say that these 12 signs of the Zodiac most clearly shadow forth the Dodecad who is the daughter of Anthropos and Ecclesia” (Hipp. op. cit. Bk VI. c. 54, p. 329, Cruice). And again (loc. cit. p. 331, Cruice): ἔτι μὴν καὶ τὴν γῆν εἰς δώδεκα κλίματα διῃρῆσθαι φάσκοντες, καὶ καθ’ ἒν ἕκαστον κλίμα, ἀνὰ μίαν δύναμιν ἐκ τοῦ οὐρανῶν κατὰ κάθετον ὑποδεχομένην, καὶ ὁμοούσια τίκτουσαν τέκνα τῇ καταπεμπούσῃ κατὰ τὴν ἀπόρροιαν δυνάμει, τύπον εἶναι τῆς ἄνω δωδεκάδος. “These are also they who assert that the earth is divided into twelve climates, and receives in each climate one special power from the heavens and produces children resembling the power thus sent down by emanation, being thus a type of the Dodecad above.” The doctrine of correspondences or, as it was called in the Middle Ages, of “signatures” is here most clearly stated. In all this the Valentinian teaching was doubtless under the influence of the ancient Egyptian ideas as to the paut neteru or “company of the gods,” as to which see Maspero’s essay Sur L’Ennéade quoted above.

[546]. It is said (p. 9, Copt.) that it is by him that the universe was created and that it is he who causes the sun to rise.

[547]. As has before been said, this is attempted in one of the documents of the Bruce Papyrus. See pp. [191], [192] infra. In the present state of the text this attempt is only difficultly intelligible, and is doubtless both later in date than and the work of an author inferior to that of the Pistis Sophia.

[548]. p. 16, Copt. Yet the First Mystery is not the creator of Matter which is evil, because Matter does not really exist. See Bruce Papyrus (Amélineau, p. 126) and n. 2, p. 190 infra.

[549]. As mentioned in the Scottish Review article referred to in n. 1, p. [135] supra, there is no passage but one in the Pistis Sophia which affords any colour for supposing that the author was acquainted with St John’s Gospel. All the quotations set forth by Harnack in his treatise Über das gnostische Buch Pistis-Sophia, Leipzig, 1891, p. 27, on which he relies to prove the converse of this proposition, turn out on analysis to appear also in one or other of the Synoptics, from which the author may well have taken them. The single exception is this (Pistis Sophia, p. 11, Copt.), “Wherefore I said unto you from the beginning, Ye are not from the Cosmos; I likewise am not from it”; John xvii. 14: “(O Father) I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.” The parallel does not seem so close as to make it certain that one document is copying from the other. Both may very possibly be taken from some collection of Logia now lost, but at one time current in Alexandrian circles; or from the Gospel of the Egyptians, from which the Pistis Sophia afterwards quotes.

[550]. See [Chap. IX], p. [107] supra.

[551]. See last note. The Authades or Proud God of the Pistis Sophia seems to have all the characteristics with which Valentinus endows his Demiurge.

[552]. So Pistis Sophia sings in her second hymn of praise after her deliverance from Chaos (p. 160, Copt.) “I am become pure light,” which she certainly was not before that event. Jesus also promises her later (p. 168, Copt.) that when the three times are fulfilled and the Authades is again wroth with her and tries to stir up Jaldabaoth and Adamas against her “I will take away their powers from them and give them to thee.” That this promise was supposed to be fulfilled seems evident from the low positions which Jaldabaoth and Adamas occupy in the Μέρος τευχῶν Σωτῆρος, while Pistis Sophia is said to furnish the “power” for the planet Venus.

[553]. See [Chap. IX], p. [108] and n. 1 supra.

[554]. All the revelations in the Pistis Sophia are in fact made in anticipation of the time “when the universe shall be caught up,” and the disciples be set to reign with Jesus in the Last Parastates. Cf. especially pp. 193-206 Copt.

[555]. The idea may not have been peculiar to Valentinus and his followers. So in the Ascensio Isaiae (x. 8-13) the “Most High the Father of my Lord” says to “my Lord Christ who will be called Jesus”: “And none of the angels of that world shall know that thou art Lord with Me of the seven heavens and of their angels. And they shall not know that Thou art with Me till with a loud voice I have called to the heavens, and their angels, and their lights, even unto the sixth heaven, in order that you may judge and destroy the princes and angels and gods of that world, and the world that is dominated by them.” Charles, Ascension of Isaiah, pp. 70-71.

[556]. p. 194, Copt.

[557]. p. 230, Copt.

[558]. On the belief in the Millennium in the primitive Church, see Döllinger, First Age of Christianity and the Church, Eng. ed. 1906, pp. 119, 123 and 268 and Ffoulkes, s.v. Chiliasts, in Dict. Christian Biog.

[559]. p. 230, Copt. Cf. Luke xxii. 29, 30.

[560]. p. 231, Copt. “disciples” not apostles. So the Manichaeans made Manes to be attended by twelve disciples. See [Chap. XIII] infra.

[561]. So Jesus says (p. 230, Copt.) of “the man who receives and accomplishes the Mystery of the Ineffable One”; “he is a man in the Cosmos, but he will reign with me in my kingdom; he is a man in the Cosmos, but he is a king in the light; he is a man in the Cosmos, but he is not of the Cosmos, and verily I say unto you, that man is I, and I am that man.”

[562]. p. 246, Copt.

[563]. See last note and n. 5, p. [147] supra.

[564]. Hatch, op. cit. p. 302 and note.

[565]. pp. 236, 237, Copt.

[566]. Loc. cit. Or they may cover a kind of allegory, as we might say that Agape or Love makes Faith, Hope, and Charity. But I believe it to be more likely that the “12 mysteries” are letters in a word. So in the Μέρος τευχῶν Σωτῆρος it is said of the “Dragon of the Outer Darkness,” which is in fact the worst of all the hells described in that book: “And the Dragon of the Outer Darkness hath twelve true (αὐθέντη) names which are in his gates, a name according to each gate of the torture-chambers. And these names differ one from the other, but they belong to each of the twelve, so that he who saith one name, saith all the names. And these I will tell you in the Emanation of the Universe”—(p. 323, Copt.). If this be thought too trivial an explanation, Irenaeus tells us that the 18 Aeons remaining after deducting the Decad or Dodecad (as the case may be) from the rest of the Pleroma were, according to the Valentinians, signified by the two first letters of the name of Jesus: ἀλλὰ καὶ διὰ τῶν προηγουμένων τοῦ ὀνόματος αὐτοῦ δύο γραμμάτων, τοῦ τε ἰῶτα καὶ τοῦ ἦτα, τοὺς δεκαοκτὼ Αἰῶνας εὐσήμως μηνύεσθαι, Irenaeus, Βk I. c. 1, § 5, p. 26, Harvey. Equally absurd according to modern ideas are the words of the Epistle of Barnabas (c. X., pp. 23, 24, Hilgenfeld), where after quoting a verse in Genesis about Abraham circumcising 318 of his slaves (cf. Gen. xiv. 14), the author says “What then is the knowledge (γνῶσις) given therein? Learn that the 18 were first, and then after a pause, he says 300. (In) the 18, I = 10, H = 8, thou hast Jesus (Ἰησοῦν). And because the Cross was meant to have grace in the T, he says also 300. He expresses therefore Jesus by two letters and the Cross by one. He knows who has placed in us the ungrafted gift of teaching. None has learned from me a more genuine word. But I know that ye are worthy.”

[567]. “The True Word” or the Word of the Place of Truth. The latter expression is constantly used in other parts of the book, and seems to refer to the χώρημα or “receptacle,” that is the heaven, of the Aeon Ἀλήθεια, that is the Decad. Cf. especially the Μέρος τευχῶν Σωτῆρος (pp. 377, 378, Copt.), where it is said that certain baptisms and a “spiritual chrism” will lead the souls of the disciples “into the Places of Truth and Goodness, to the Place of the Holy of all Holies, to the Place in which there is neither female, nor male, nor shape in that Place, but there is Light, everlasting, ineffable.”

[568]. These ἀποτάγματα are set out in detail in the Μέρος τευχῶν Σωτῆρος (pp. 255 sqq. Copt.), where the disciples are ordered to “preach to the whole world ... renounce (ἀποτασσετε) the whole world and all the matter which is therein, and all its cares and all its sins, and in a word all its conversation (ὁμιλιαι) which is therein, that ye may be worthy of the mysteries of the Light, that ye may be preserved from all the punishments which are in the judgments” and so on. It should be noted that these are only required of the psychics or animal men.

[569]. No doubt in the Greek original the actual seal was here figured. For examples, see the Bruce Papyrus, passim. The idea is typically Egyptian. As M. Maspero says in his essay on “La Table d’Offrandes,” R.H.R. t. xxxv. No. 3 (1897), p. 325: no spell was in the view of the ancient Egyptians efficacious unless accompanied by a talisman or amulet which acted as a material support to it, as the body to the soul.

[570]. p. 238, Copt.

[571]. Hatch, op. cit. p. 296, n. 1, for references.

[572]. 1 Cor. xv. 29. The practice of “baptizing for the dead,” as the A. V. has it, evidently continued into Tertullian’s time. See Tertull. de Resurrectione Carnis, c. XLVIII. p. 530, Oehler.

[573]. Döllinger, First Age, p. 327.

[574]. Hatch, op. cit. p. 307. The Emperor Constantine, who was baptized on his deathbed, was a case in point. The same story was told later about the Cathars or Manichaeans of Languedoc. The motive seems in all these cases to have been the same: as baptism washed away all sin, it was as well to delay it until the recipient could sin no more.

[575]. Hatch, op. cit. p. 295 and note, for references.

[576]. p. 236, Copt.

[577]. See n. 2, p. [166] supra.

[578]. Döllinger, First Age, pp. 234, 235.

[579]. Ibid. p. 235. Rom. vi. 4; Gal. iii. 27, 29, are quoted in support.

[580]. Ibid. p. 235. Rom. vii. 22; 1 Cor. vi. 14; Eph. iii. 16 and v. 30 are quoted in support.

[581]. Hatch, op. cit. p. 342.

[582]. p. 228, Copt.

[583]. pp. 230, 231, Copt.

[584]. The Pistis Sophia proper comes to an end twenty pages later.

[585]. Döllinger, First Age, p. 239. 1 Cor. x. 16 sqq.; Eph. v. 30, quoted in support.

[586]. Justin Martyr was probably born 114, and martyred 165 A.D. For the passage quoted in text, see his First Apology, c. LXVI., where he mentions among other things that the devils set on the worshippers of Mithras to imitate the Christian Eucharist by celebrating a ceremony with bread and a cup of water.

[587]. Hatch, op. cit. p. 308. This visible change of the contents of the cup of water to the semblance of blood is described in the Μέρος τευχῶν Σωτῆρος (p. 377, Copt.), and with more detail in the Bruce Papyrus. Cf. p. [183] infra.

[588]. Μέρος τευχῶν Σωτῆρος, p. 354, Copt.

[589]. Whether the author of the Pistis Sophia really intended to describe them may be doubted; but it is to be noted that the sacraments which Jesus is represented as celebrating in the Μέρος τευχῶν Σωτῆρος can hardly be they, although Jesus calls them in one place (p. 374, Copt.), “the mysteries of the light which remit sins, which themselves are appellations and names of light.” These are administered to the twelve disciples without distinction, and it is evident that the author of these books is quite unacquainted with any division into pneumatic and psychic, and knows nothing of the higher mysteries called in the Pistis Sophia proper “the mysteries of the Ineffable One” and “the mysteries of the First Mystery.” We should get over many difficulties if we supposed the two later books to be Marcosian in origin, but in any event they are later than the Pistis Sophia.

[590]. p. 246, Copt. So in the Manichaean text described in [Chapter XIII], Jesus is Himself called “the Tree of Knowledge.”

[591]. So Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 1, § 11, pp. 58, 54, Harvey: Ἐπαιδεύθησαν γὰρ τὰ ψυχικὰ οἱ ψυχικοὶ ἄνθρωποι, οἱ δι’ ἔργων καὶ πίστεως ψιλῆς βεβαιούμενοι, καὶ μὴ τὴν τελείαν γνῶσιν ἔχοντες· εἶναι δὲ τούτους ἀπὸ τῆς Ἐκκλησίας ἡμᾶς λέγουσι· διὸ καὶ ἡμῖν μὲν ἀναγκαῖον εἶναι τὴν ἀγαθὴν πρᾶξιν ἀποφαίνονται· ἄλλως γὰρ ἀδύνατον σωθῆναι. Αὐτοὺς δὲ μὴ διὰ πράξεως, ἀλλὰ διὰ τὸ φύσει πνευματικοὺς εἶναι, πάντῃ τε καὶ πάντως σωθήσεσθαι δογματίζουσιν. “For the psychic (animal) men are taught psychic things, they being made safe by works and by mere faith, and not having perfect knowledge. And they say that we of the Church are these people. Wherefore they declare that good deeds are necessary for us: for otherwise we could not be saved. But they decree that they themselves are entirely and in every thing saved, not by works, but because they are pneumatic (spiritual) by nature.”

[592]. p. 249, Copt.

[593]. p. 250, Copt. It is to be observed that these “cleansing mysteries” will only admit their recipients to the light of the Kingdom of Jesus—not to that of the First Mystery or of the Ineffable One.

[594]. As did perhaps the Manichaeans afterwards. See J.R.A.S. for January, 1913, and [Chap. XIII] infra.

[595]. So Charles Kingsley in Hypatia. Gibbon, Decline and Fall, vol. IV. c. 60, n. 15, quotes a statement of Rufinus that there were nearly as many monks living in the deserts as citizens in the towns.

[596]. Mallet, Le Culte de Neit à Saïs, p. 200, points out that the God Nu described in the 18th Chapter of the Book of the Dead is “the infinite abyss, the Βυθός, the πατὴρ ἄγνωστος of the Gnostics.” So Maspero in Rev. Critique, 30 Sept. 1909, p. 13, who declares that the author of the Pistis Sophia was influenced directly or indirectly by Osirian beliefs.

[597]. Moret, Le verbe créateur et révélateur, p. 286, for references.

[598]. Maspero, Ét. Égyptol. t. II. p. 187: “L’ogdoade est une conception hermopolitaine qui s’est répandue plus tard sur toute l’Égypte à côté de l’ennéade d’Heliopolis. Les théologiens d’Hermopolis avaient adopté le concept de la neuvaine, seulement ils avaient amoindri les huit dieux qui formaient le corps du dieu principal. Ils les avaient reduits à n’être plus que des êtres presque abstraits nommés d’après la fonction qu’on leur assignait, en agissant en masse sur l’ordre et d’après l’impulsion du dieu chef. Leur ennéade se composait donc d’un dieu tout-puissant et d’une ogdoade.”

[599]. “Son origine (l’ogdoade hermopolitaine subordonné à un corps monade) est fort ancienne: on trouve quelques-unes des divinités qui la composent mentionnées déjà dans les textes des Pyramides.” Maspero, op. cit. t. II. p. 383. As he says later the actual number of gods in the Ennead or Ogdoad was a matter of indifference to the ancient Egyptian: “les dieux comptaient toujours pour neuf, quand même ils étaient treize ou quinze,” ibid. p. 387. Cf. Amélineau, Gnost. Ég. pp. 294, 295.

[600]. See n. 5, p. [175] supra, and Maspero, “Hypogées Royaux,” Ét. Égyptol. II. p. 130, n. 2.

[601]. See n. 2, p. [153] supra.

[602]. Maspero, “Hypogées Royaux,” t. II. p. 121.

[603]. Maspero, Rev. Crit. 30 Sept. 1909, p. 13.

[604]. Maspero, “Hypogées Royaux,” t. II. p. 118. Cf. Pistis Sophia, p. 84, Copt. and elsewhere.

[605]. Maspero, “La Table d’Offrandes,” R.H.R. t. XXXV. (1897) p. 325. As has been said, in the Ascensio Isaiae, anyone passing from one heaven to another has to give a password, but not to exhibit a seal.

[606]. Amélineau, Gnost. Ég. p. 196; Schmidt, Koptisch-Gnostische Schriften, Bd I. p. xiii.

[607]. It is so used in the Excerpta Theodoti, and in the Papyrus Bruce. See p. [190], infra.

[608]. Jean Reville, Le Quatrième Évangile, Paris, 1901, p. 321. Mgr Duchesne, Early Christian Church, pp. 102, 192, says in effect that St John’s Gospel appeared after the Apostle’s death and was not accepted without opposition. He thinks Tatian and Irenaeus the first writers who quoted from it with acknowledgement of its authorship. If we put the date of Tatian’s birth at 120 (see Dict. Christian Biog. s.h.n.) and allow a sufficient period for the initiation into heathen mysteries which he mentions, for his conversion and for his becoming a teacher, we do not get a much earlier date than 170 for his acceptance of the Fourth Gospel. Irenaeus was, of course, later in date than Tatian.

[609]. Tertullian, Adv. Valentinianos, c. 2.

[610]. Amélineau, Gnost. Ég. p. 180.

[611]. Tertullian, de Carne Christi, c. 20.

[612]. E.g. p. 47, Copt. Cf. also ibid. pp. 147, 170, 176.

[613]. Tertullian, adv. Val. c. v.

[614]. Op. cit. c. 9.

[615]. Op. cit. c. 18.

[616]. Op. cit. c. 20.

[617]. Op. cit. c. 25.

[618]. Tertullian, de Carne Christi, c. 9. Irenaeus, Bk II. c. 7, § 1, p. 270, Harvey, seems to have known both of Barbelo and of the Virgin of Light, since he speaks of corpora sursum ... spiritalia et lucida, “spiritual and translucent bodies on high” casting a shadow below in quam Matrem suam descendisse dicunt “into which they allege their Mother descended.”

[619]. ⲞⲨ ⲘⲈⲢⲞⲤ ⲎⲦⲈ Ⲏ ⲦⲈⲨⲬⲞⲤ Ⲙ ⲎⲤⲰⲦⲎⲢ, or (in Greek) Μέρος τευχῶν Σωτῆρος.

[620]. “This I say to you in paradigm, and likeness and similitude, but not in truth of shape, nor have I revealed the word in truth,” p. 253, Copt. So in the next page (p. 254, Copt.), Jesus says of the perfect initiate that “He also has found the words of the Mysteries, those which I have written to you according to similitude—the same are the members of the Ineffable One.” From His mention of “writing,” one would imagine that the reference here is to documents such as the Bruce Papyrus which gives the pictures of “seals” together with cryptographically written words.

[621]. p. 357, Copt. This opening sentence could not have been written by one of the Valentinians of Hadrian’s time, who, as has been said above, “did not choose to call Jesus, Lord,” Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 1, I. p. 12, Harvey.

[622]. In the address of Jesus beginning “O my Father, Father of every Fatherhood, boundless light” with which this part of the Μ. τ. σ. opens, we can, with a little good will, identify nearly every word of the “galimatias” which at first sight seems mere gibberish. Thus, the whole invocation reads: αεηιουω, ϊαω, αωϊ, οϊαψινωθερ, θερ[ι]νοψ, νωψιθερ, ζαγουρη, παγουρη, νεθμομαωθ, νεψιομαωθ, μαραχαχθα, θωβαρραβαυ, θαρναχαχαν, ζοροκοθορα Ιεου Σαβαωθ. The seven vowels to which many mystical interpretations have been assigned, and which have even been taken for a primitive system of musical notation (C. E. Ruelle, “Le Chant des Sept Voyelles Grecques,” Rev. des Ét. Grecques, Paris, 1889, t. II. p. 43, and pp. 393-395), probably express the sound to Greek ears of the Jewish pronunciation of Yahweh or Jehovah. The word Iao we have before met with many times both as a name of Dionysos and otherwise, and is here written anagrammatically from the difficulty which the Greeks found in dealing with Semitic languages written the reverse way to their own. The word ψινωθερ which follows and is also written as an anagram is evidently an attempt to transcribe in Greek letters the Egyptian words P, Shai, neter (P = Def. article, Shai = the Egyptian God of Fate whose name Revillout, Rev. Égyptol. Paris, 1892, pp. 29-38, thinks means “The Highest,” and neter or nuter the determinative for “god”), the whole reading “Most High God.” The words ζαγουρη παγουρη (better, πατουρη) are from the Hebrew roots סגר פטר and seem to be the “he that openeth and no man shutteth; and shutteth and no man openeth” of Rev. iii. 7. Νεθμομαωθ, which is often found in the Magic Papyri, is reminiscent of the Egyptian neb maat “Lord of Truth,” the following νεψιομαωθ being probably a variant by a scribe who was uncertain of the orthography. Μαραχαχθα I can make nothing of, although as the phrase νεφθομαωθ μαραχαχθα appears in the Magic Papyrus of Leyden generally called W (Leemans, Papyri Graeci, etc. t. II. p. 154) in a spell there said to be written by “Thphe the Hierogrammateus” for “Ochus the king,” it is evidently intended for Egyptian. In the same spell appear the words θαρνμαχαχ ζοροκοθορα and θωβαρραβαυ which are evidently the same as those in the Μ. τ. σ., and of which I will only say that, while Mr King supposes ζοροκοθορα to mean “light-gatherer,” θωβαρραβαυ is in the leaden tabula devotionis of Carthage (Molinier, “Imprecation gravée sur plomb,” Mem. de la Soc. Nat. des Antiquaires de France, série VI. t. VIII. Paris, 1897, pp. 212-216) described as τον θεὸν του τῆς παλινγενεσιας “the god of rebirth.” The concluding words are of course merely “Yahweh of Hosts.”

[623]. The description of the moon-chariot drawn by two white oxen is found in Claudian’s Proserpine. According to Cumont (Textes et Monuments relatifs aux Mystères de Mithra, t. I. p. 126 and note) it was not until Hadrian’s time that this conception, which seems to have been Persian in origin, became fixed in the West.

[624]. This “Middle Way” has nothing to do with the τόπος or “place” of the middle, where are set in the Pistis Sophia proper the powers who preside over incarnation. It is below the visible sphere (p. 364, Copt.) and is met with in Rabbinic lore. See Kohler, op. cit. p. 587.

[625]. This division of the Twelve Aeons into two halves seems at first sight inconsistent with the description in the Pistis Sophia proper which always speaks of them as Twelve. Yet it is plain that the author of the Pistis Sophia knew the legend here given, as he makes John the Divine speak (p. 12, Copt.) of “the rulers who belong to the Aeon of Jabraoth” and had made peace with the mysteries of the light. These “rulers who repented” are again mentioned on p. 195, Copt. In the other part of the Μέρος τευχῶν Σωτῆρος (p. 356, Copt.), it is also said that the souls of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are to be placed in “the Place of Jabraoth and of all the rulers who repented” until Jesus can take them with Him to the light. So the Papyrus Bruce (Amélineau, p. 239).

[626]. There are seven pages missing between the descriptions of the tortures of the Middle Way and those of Amenti and Chaos, the gap occurring at p. 379, Copt. It is possible that what follows after this is not from the Μέρος τευχῶν Σωτῆρος but an extract from yet another document.

[627]. In the text of the Μ. τ. σ. (p. 377, Copt.), Jesus simply asks His father for a sign, and “the sign is made which Jesus had said.” In the Papyrus Bruce where the same ceremony is described in almost identical words, it is said that the wine of the offering was turned into water which leaped forth of the vase which contained it so as to serve for baptism. Cf. Amélineau, Gnost. Ég. p. 253. That Marcus the magician by juggling produced similar prodigies, see Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 7, II. pp. 116, 117, Harvey.

[628]. The name of Jaldabaoth, which in the whole of the rest of the MS. is spelt ⲒⲀⲖⲆⲀⲂⲀⲰⲐ, appears on p. 380 immediately after the lacuna of seven pages as ⲒⲀⲖⲦⲀⲂⲀⲰⲐ, Ialtabaoth, which supports the theory of another author.

[629]. This is also briefly mentioned in the part of the Μέρος τευχῶν Σωτῆρος just described. See pp. 386, sqq., Copt.

[630]. This appears to contradict the Pistis Sophia proper, where it is said that the Virgin of Light gives the soul, and the Great Iao the Good the power.

[631]. Cf. the speech of the crocodile in the tale of the Predestined Prince: “Ah, moi, je suis ton destin qui te poursuit; quoi que tu fasses, tu seras ramené sur mon chemin.” Maspero, Contes Populaires de l’Égypte Ancienne, 3rd ed. Paris, n. d. p. 175.

[632]. Evidently the Egyptian ka or double. Cf. the “Heart Amulet” described by Erman, Handbook of Egyptian Religion, pp. 142, 143, where the dead says to his heart: “Oh heart that I have from my mother! Oh heart that belongs to my spirit, do not appear against me as witness, provide no opposition against me before the judges, do not contradict me before him who governs the balance, thou art my spirit that is in my body....” This seems to be a transcription of the 30th Chapter of the Book of the Dead, of which there are several variants, none of which however directly suggest that the heart is the accuser to be dreaded. See Budge, Book of the Dead, 1909, vol. II. pp. 146-152.

[633]. Thus the Μ. τ. σ. says (p. 355, Copt.) “For this I despoiled myself (i.e. laid aside my heavenly nature) to bring the mysteries into the Cosmos, for all are under [the yoke of] sin, and all lack the gifts of the mysteries.... Verily, verily I say unto you: until I came into the Cosmos, no soul entered into the light.” Contrast this with the words of the Pistis Sophia proper (p. 250, Copt.): “Those who are of the light have no need of the mysteries, because they are pure light,” which are made the “interpretation” of the text: “They that are whole have no need of a physician, but they that are sick.” See also the Pistis Sophia, p. 246, Copt., where it is said of the mysteries promised by Jesus that “they lead every race of men inwards into the highest places according to the χωρημα of the inheritance, so that ye have no need of the rest of the lower mysteries, but you will find them in the two books of Jeû which Enoch wrote etc.”

[634]. p. 280, Copt.

[635]. Μ. τ. σ. p. 388, Copt., where it is said that the soul of the righteous but uninitiated man is after death taken into Amenti and afterwards into the Middle Way, being shown the tortures in each place, “but the breath of the flame of the punishments shall only afflict him a little.” Afterwards he is taken to the Virgin of Light, who sets him before the Little Sabaoth the Good until the Sphere be turned round so that Zeus (♃) and Aphrodite (♀) come into aspect with the Virgin of Light and Kronos (♄) and Ares (♂) come after them. She then puts the soul into a righteous body, which she plainly could not do unless under the favourable influence of the “benefics” ♃ and ♀. This seems also to be the dominant idea of the Excerpta Theodoti, q.v. Compare this, however, with the words of the Pistis Sophia proper (pp. 27, 28, Copt.) where Mary Magdalene explains that the alteration made by Jesus in the course of the stars was effected in order to baffle those skilled in the mysteries taught by the angels “who came down” (as in the Book of Enoch), from predicting the future by astrology and magic arts learned from the sinning angels.

[636]. p. 361, Copt.

[637]. That is the Sphere of Destiny acting through its emissary the Moira or Fate described above, p. [184] supra.

[638]. It is a curious example of the fossilizing, so to speak, of ancient names in magic that Shakespeare should preserve for us in the Tempest and Macbeth the names of Ariel and Hecate which we find in the Μ. τ. σ. No doubt both were taken by him from mediaeval grimoires which themselves copied directly from the Graeco-Egyptian Magic Papyri mentioned in Chap. III supra. Cf. the use of Greek “names of God” like ischiros (sic!) athanatos, etc. in Reginald Scot’s Discovery of Witchcraft, passim.

[639]. So that it could not profit by the knowledge of the awful punishments prepared for sinners. I do not know that this idea occurs elsewhere.

[640]. p. 380, Copt.

[641]. The Marcosian authorship of the whole MS. is asserted by Bunsen, Hippolytus and his Age, vol. I. p. 47. Köstlin, Über das gnostische System des Buch Pistis Sophia in the Theologische Jahrbücher of Baur and Zeller, Tübingen, 1854, will have none of it, and declares the Pistis Sophia to be an Ophite work. In this, the first commentator on the book is followed by Grüber, Der Ophiten, Würzburg, 1864, p. 5, §§ 3, 4.

[642]. Clem. Alex. Strom. Bk I. c. 19.

[643]. Thus, according to Marcus (Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 8, § 11, pp. 145, 146, Harvey), “that name of the Saviour which may be pronounced, i.e. Jesus, is composed of six letters, but His ineffable name of 24.” The cryptogram in the Pistis Sophia is in these words (p. 125, Copt.): “These are the names which I will give thee from the Boundless One downwards. Write them with a sign that the sons of God may show them forth of this place. This is the name of the Deathless One ααα ωωω, and this is the name of the word by which the Perfect Man is moved: ιιι. These are the interpretations of the names of the mysteries. The first is ααα, the interpretation of which is φφφ. The second which is μμμ or which is ωωω, its interpretation is ααα. The third is ψψψ, its interpretation is οοο. The fourth is φφφ, its interpretation is ννν. The fifth is δδδ, its interpretation is ααα, which above the throne is ααα. This is the interpretation of the second αααα, αααα, αααα, which is the interpretation of the whole name.” The line drawn above the three Alphas and Omegas is used in the body of the text to denote words in a foreign (i.e. non-Egyptian) language such as Hebrew; but in the Papyrus Bruce about to be described, the same letters without any line above are given as the name of “the Father of the Pleroma.” See Amélineau’s text, p. 113. The “moving” of the image (πλάσμα) of the Perfect Man is referred to in Hippolytus (op. cit. p. 144, Cruice). That the Tetragrammaton was sometimes written by Jewish magicians with three Jods or i.i.i. see Gaster, The Oldest Version of Midrash Megillah, in Kohut’s Semitic Studies, Berlin, 1897, p. 172. So on a magic cup in the Berlin Museum, conjuration is made “in the name of Jahve the God of Israel who is enthroned upon the cherubim ... and in the name A A A A” (Stübe, Judisch-Babylonische Zaubertexte, Halle, 1895, pp. 23-27). For the meaning of the words “above the throne,” see Franck, La Kabbale, p. 45, n. 2.

[644]. The opening words of the invocation βασεμὰ χαμοσσὴ βαιανορὰ μισταδία ῥουαδὰ κουστὰ βαβοφὸρ καλαχθεῖ which Irenaeus (Bk I. c. 14, § 2, pp. 183, 184, Harvey) quotes in this connection from Marcus certainly read, as Renan (L’Église Chrétienne, p. 154, n. 3) points out, “In the name of Achamoth” (i.e. Sophia).

[645]. See n. 3, p. [180], supra. In the Pistis Sophia proper Jesus is never spoken of save as “the Saviour” or as “the First Mystery.”

[646]. Cf. Maspero, Hypogées Royaux, passim, esp. pp. 157 and 163.

[647]. Schmidt’s study of the Bruce Papyrus with a full text and translation was published in the Texte und Untersuchungen of von Gebhardt and Harnack under the title Gnostische Schriften in Koptischer Sprache aus dem Codex Brucianus, Leipzig, 1892. He republished the translation of this together with one of the Pistis Sophia in the series of early Greek Christian literature undertaken by the Patristic Committee of the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences under the title Koptisch-Gnostische Schriften, Bd I. Leipzig, 1905. His arrangement of the papyrus leaves makes much better sense than that of Amélineau, but it is only arrived at by eliminating all passages which seem to be inconsequent and attributing them to separate works. The fragments which he distinguishes as A and B and describes as “gnostischen Gebetes,” certainly appear to form part of those which he describes as the two “books of Jeû.”

[648]. Amélineau, “Notice sur le Papyrus gnostique Bruce,” Notices et Extraits des MSS. de la Bibl. Nat. etc. Paris, 1891, p. 106. This would seem to make matter the creation of God, but the author gets out of the dilemma by affirming (op. cit. p. 126) that “that which was not was the evil which is manifested in matter” and that while that which exists is called αἰώνιος, “everlasting,” that which does not exist is called ὕλη, “matter.”

[649]. Amélineau, op. cit. p. 231.

[650]. This word arrangement (οἰκονομία) occurs constantly in the Pistis Sophia, as when we read (p. 193, Copt.) that the last παραστάτης by the command of the First Mystery placed Jeû, Melchisedek, and four other powers in the τόπος of those who belong to the right hand πρός οἰκονομίας of the Assembly of the Light. There, as here, it doubtless means that they were arranged in the same order as the powers above them in pursuance of the principle that “that which is above is like that which is below,” or, in other words, of the doctrine of correspondences. From the Gnostics the word found its way into Catholic theology, as when Tertullian (adv. Praxean, c. 3) says that the majority of simple-minded Christians “not understanding that though God be one, he must yet be believed to exist with his οἰκονομία, were frightened.” Cf. Hatch, H.L. p. 324.

[651]. Perhaps the House or Place of Ἀλήθεια or Truth many times alluded to in the Μ. τ. σ.

[652]. Aerôdios is shortly after spoken of as a person or power, so that here, as elsewhere, in this literature, the place is called by the name of its ruler.

[653]. This word constantly occurs in the Magic Papyri, generally with another word prefixed, as σεσενγεν βαρφαραγγης (Papyrus Mimaut, l. 12, Wessely’s Griechische Zauberpapyri, p. 116), which C. W. King (Gnostics and their Remains, 2nd ed. p. 289) would translate “they who stand before the mount of Paradise” or in other words the Angels of the Presence. Amélineau (Notices, etc. p. 144, n. 2) will have Barpharanges to be “a hybrid word, part Chaldean and part Greek” meaning “Son of the Abyss”—which is as unlikely as the other interpretation.

[654]. p. 143, Amélineau (Notices, etc.); p. 361, Schmidt, K.-G.S.

[655]. According to Amélineau, op. cit., “The Book of the Great Word in Every Mystery.”

[656]. pp. 188-199, Amélineau, op. cit.; Schmidt, K.-G.S. pp. 308-314.

[657]. pp. 219, 220, Amélineau, op. cit.; Schmidt, K.-G.S. p. 226. She seems to be here called “the Great Virgin of the Spirit.” Cf. the Ὑπέθεντο γὰρ Αἰῶνα τινὰ ἀνώλεθρον ἐν παρθενικῷ διάγοντι πνεύματι, ὁ βαρβηλὼθ ὀνομάζουσι, “For [some of them] suppose a certain indestructible Aeon continuing in a Virgin spirit whom they call Barbelo” of Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 27, § 1, p. 222, Harvey.

[658]. The powers named are thus called in both the Pistis Sophia and the Bruce Papyrus. See Pistis Sophia, pp. 248, 252 Copt.; Amélineau, op. cit. p. 177.

[659]. According to the Pistis Sophia (p. 1, Copt.), 11 years elapsed between the Crucifixion and the descent of the “Vestures” upon Jesus on the Mount of Olives. We may imagine another year to have been consumed by the revelations made in the book.

[660]. If the “Books of Jeû” were ever written we should expect them to bear the name of Enoch, who is said to have taken them down in Paradise at the dictation of Jesus. See p. [147], n. 5, supra. Very possibly the expression really does refer to some of the mass of literature once passing under the name of Enoch and now lost to us.

[661]. Amélineau, op. cit. p. 72.

[662]. Schmidt, K.-G.S. p. 26.

[663]. Amélineau, op. cit. p. 211; Schmidt, K.-G.S. p. 322. The West or Amenti is the Egyptian name for Hades.

[664]. Maspero, “Egyptian Souls and their Worlds,” Ét. Égyptol. t. I. p. 395.

[665]. Maspero, “Hypogées Royaux,” Ét. Égyptol. t. II. pp. 148, 165.

[666]. Ibid. pp. 178, 179.

[667]. Ibid. p. 31.

[668]. Ibid. pp. 14-15.

[669]. Ibid. p. 166. To make things more difficult, the guardian sometimes had a different name for every hour. Cf. ibid. p. 168.

[670]. Ibid. pp. 124, n. 2, 163. For the talismans or amulets, see Maspero, “La Table d’Offrandes,” R.H.R. t. XXXV. (1897), p. 325.

[671]. Maspero, “Hyp. Roy.” pp. 113, 118.

[672]. Ibid. pp. 162, 163.

[673]. Ibid. pp. 41, 163.

[674]. Ibid. p. 178.

[675]. Ibid. p. 179.

[676]. The kings, according to a belief which was evidently very old in the time of the Pyramid-Builders, were supposed to possess immortality as being gods even in their lifetime. Later, the gift was extended to rulers of nomes and other rich men, and finally to all those who could purchase the spells that would assure it. In Maspero’s words “La vie d’au delà n’était pas un droit pour l’Égyptien: il pouvait la gagner par la vertu des formules et des pratiques, mais il pouvait aussi bien la perdre, et s’il était pauvre ou isolé, les chances étaient qu’il la perdit à bref délai” (op. cit. p. 174).

[677]. p. 254, Copt.

[678]. de Faye (Intro. etc. p. 110) shows clearly, not only that the aims and methods of the school of Valentinus changed materially after its founder’s death, but that it was only then that the Catholic Church perceived the danger of them, and set to work to combat them systematically.

[679]. To thinkers like Dean Inge (Christian Mysticism, 1899, p. 82) this was the natural and appointed end of Gnosticism, which according to him was “rotten before it was ripe.” “It presents,” he says, “all the features which we shall find to be characteristic of degenerate mysticism. Not to speak of its oscillations between fanatical austerities and scandalous licence, and its belief in magic and other absurdities, we seem, when we read Irenaeus’ description of a Valentinian heretic, to hear the voice of Luther venting his contempt upon some Geisterer of the sixteenth century.” It may be so; yet, after all, Gnosticism in its later developments lasted for a longer time than the doctrines of Luther have done, particularly in the land of their birth.

[680]. Cf. Maspero, Life in Ancient Egypt and Assyria, Eng. ed. 1892, pp. 90-92, for the distaste of the Egyptians of Ramesside times for the life of a soldier and their delight in that of a scribe.

[681]. All these, especially alchemy, are illustrated in the Magic Papyrus of Leyden known as W. See Leemans, Pap. Gr. t. II. pp. 83 sqq.

[682]. Gibbon, Decline and Fall, vol. III. p. 214, Bury’s ed.

[683]. Renan, L’Église Chrétienne, pp. 154, 155, and authorities there quoted. Cf. Hatch, H. L. pp. 129, 130, 293, 307-309.

[684]. Harnack, What is Christianity? p. 210; Duchesne, Early Christian Church, p. 32.

[685]. [Chap. IX.] p. [118] supra.

[686]. Renan, Marc Aurèle, p. 49. Cf. Dill, Nero to Marcus, pp. 473-477.

[687]. Renan, L’Église Chrétienne, pp. 31-33, and Hadrian’s letter there quoted.

[688]. Of the defences mentioned in the text the Apology of Quadratus is the only one still lost to us. Justin Martyr’s two Apologies are among the best known of patristic works. That of Aristides was found by Dr Rendel Harris in a Syriac MS. in 1889. For the identification of this by Dean Armitage Robinson with the story of Barlaam and Josaphat, see Cambridge Texts and Studies, vol. 1. No. 1.

[689]. The account of Marcion’s life given by Salmon (s.v. Marcion) in the Dict. Christian Biog. is here mostly followed. Abundant references to the Fathers and other sources are there given.

[690]. Tertullian’s talk (adv. Marcion. Bk I. c. 1) about its barbarism and the natives living in waggons is mere rhetoric. He probably knew nothing about the place.

[691]. Stoicae studiosus. Tertullian, de Praescript. c. XXX.

[692]. Id. adv. Marc. Bk IV. c. 4; and de Praescript. c. XXX., where the money is said to have been 200 sestertia or nearly £1800.

[693]. Tertullian, adv. Marc. Bk I. c. 2. Cf. Pseudo Tertullianus, adv. omn. Haer. c. XVI.

[694]. Neander, Ch. Hist. II. p. 150; cf. Tertullian, de Praescript. c. XLI.

[695]. Ibid. op. cit. c. XXX. Salmon (Dict. Christian Biog. s.v. Marcion) wishes to transfer this story to Cerdo.

[696]. Neander, Church Hist. II. p. 139, disbelieves it.

[697]. Justin Martyr, First Apol. cc. XXVI., LVIII. He writes as Marcion’s contemporary. Cf. Clem. Alex. Strom. Bk III. c. 3.

[698]. Epiphanius, Haer. XLII. p. 553, Oehler.

[699]. Tertullian, adv. Marc. Bk IV. c. 5.

[700]. Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. Bk IV. c. 14.

[701]. The council was held 692 A.D. See Salmon in Dict. Christian Biog. s.v. Marcion.

[702]. Tertullian, adv. Marc. Bk I. c. 27.

[703]. The story that he seduced a virgin is now generally held to mean merely that he corrupted the unsullied faith of the Church. Cf. Hegesippus in Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. Bk V. c. 22. So Salmon, art. cit. supra. As Neander points out (Ch. Hist. II. p. 136 note), Tertullian, had he known the story, would certainly have published it. Yet he contrasts Marcion’s chastity with the real or supposed incontinence of his follower, Apelles (de Praescript. c. XXX.).

[704]. Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 25, p. 219, Harvey.

[705]. Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk VII. c. 3, p. 370, Cruice.

[706]. So Salmon, art. cit., Renan, and others. This view, however, cannot apply to Justin Martyr who was, as we have seen, his contemporary. See n. 5. p. [205] supra.

[707]. See Salmon (Dict. Christian Biog. s.v. Marcion) for authorities.

[708]. See Harnack’s article on Marcion in Encyc. Brit. (11th ed.).

[709]. Tertullian, adv. Marc. Bk IV. c. 2. Marcion apparently knew nothing of St John’s Gospel, which may not have become public till after his death. Had he done so, as Renan says (L’Égl. Chrétienne, p. 71), he would probably have preferred it to any other, because of its markedly anti-Jewish tendency.

[710]. According to him, Jesus was not born of woman. Cf. Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk VII. c. 31, pp. 383-384, Cruice.

[711]. The whole controversy is well summed up in Matter, Hist. du Gnost. t. II. pp. 238-242.

[712]. See Matter, op. cit. t. II. pp. 246-260, where Marcion’s emendations are given chapter by chapter and their sources cited.

[713]. Hahn, in his Antitheses Marcionis gnostici, Königsberg, 1823, claimed to have restored this book, while Hilgenfeld has examined the extant remains of Marcion’s Gospel in Das Evangelium Marcions. He attempted to restore Marcion’s Apostolicon in the Zeitschr. für hist. Theol. 1855.

[714]. The Antitheses seem to have been seen by Photius in the Xth century, so that we need not despair.

[715]. Like the Eros-Phanes of the Orphics and the Ophite Agape. So Pausanias, Bk IX. c. 27, says the Lycomidae sang in the Mysteries hymns to Eros, which he had read, thanks to a δαδοῦχος or torch-bearer at Eleusis.

[716]. Tertullian, adv. Marc. Bk I. c. 2, says that Marcion is obliged to admit the existence of a Creator, because his work is manifest; but that he will never be able to prove that of a higher God than he—a mode of reasoning which might take him further than he intends.

[717]. Isaiah, xlv. 7.

[718]. Tertullian, adv. Marc. Bk III. c. 8.

[719]. Neander, Ch. Hist. II. pp. 142 sqq.

[720]. Tertullian, adv. Marc. Bk III. c. 24.

[721]. Op. cit. Bk III. c. 4. Cf Neander, Ch. Hist. II. p. 144.

[722]. Tertullian, op. cit. Bk V. c. 1.

[723]. Gal. i. 1. Tertullian, adv. Marc. Bk V., contains most of Marcion’s dealings with the Pauline Epistles.

[724]. Gal. i. 6, 7.

[725]. Gal. ii. 11 sqq.

[726]. Gal. iii. 14.

[727]. 1 Cor. i. 21.

[728]. Tertullian, adv. Marc. Bk V. c. 5.

[729]. 2 Cor. iv. 4. Cf. Tertullian, op. cit. Bk V. c. 11.

[730]. Tertullian, op. cit. Bk V. c. 14.

[731]. Rom. x. 2, 3.

[732]. 2 Thess. i. 8. Cf. Tertullian, op. cit. Bk V. c. 16.

[733]. Epiphanius, Haer. XLII. p. 676, Oehler; Tertullian, loc. cit.

[734]. Ephes. iii. 8, 9.

[735]. Tertullian, op. cit. Bk V. c. 18.

[736]. But see n. 2, p. [217], infra.

[737]. As is plain from the words of Plutarch quoting, as is generally thought, Theopompus of Chios. See Is. et Os. cc. XLVI., XLVII. Al-Bîrûnî, Chronology, p. 189, says indeed that both Bardesanes and Marcion borrowed from Zoroaster. But this was eight centuries after Marcion’s death, and we have no evidence as to Al-Bîrûnî’s means of knowledge of his tenets.

[738]. Harvey’s Irenaeus, I. p. cli. There is a curious resemblance to Marcion’s Demiurge in the Clementine Homilies, XX. c. 2, where the king of this world who rules by law and rejoices in the destruction of sinners is mentioned. But the Homilies are probably Ebionite and certainly, in the form in which they have come down to us, later than Marcion.

[739]. Neander Antignostikus, Eng. ed. vol. II. p. 490, calls him the representative of the Protestant spirit. In modern times, it is perhaps sufficient to notice Harnack’s predilection, as shown in his Dogmengeschichte, for Marcion and his works. Foakes-Jackson, Some Christian Difficulties of the Second and Twentieth Centuries (Hulsean Lectures), Cambridge, 1903, pp. 19 sqq., thinks the study of the controversy between Marcion and Tertullian should especially appeal to Modernists.

[740]. Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk VII. c. 29, p. 378, Cruice.

[741]. Epiphanius, Haer. XLII. p. 556, Oehler.

[742]. Op. et loc. cit.

[743]. Tertullian, adv. Marc. Bk IV. c. 11. Cf. p. 207, supra.

[744]. Tertullian, op. cit. Bk I. c. 27.

[745]. Harnack in Encyclopaedia Britannica (11th ed.) s.v. “Marcion.”

[746]. He always couples Valentinus and Marcion together. Cf. de Praescpt. cc. XXIX., XXX. Justin Martyr, Marcion’s contemporary, says (First Apolog. c. XXVI.) that “he is even now teaching men of every nation to speak blasphemies.” Renan, L’Égl. Chrétienne, p. 363, thinks that the Marcionites were “much the most numerous sect before Arius.”

[747]. Foakes-Jackson, Hulsean Lectures, p. 108. Cf. Sanday, The Gospels in the 2nd Cent., Oxford, 1876, p. 236.

[748]. Theodoret, Epp. 113 and 145.

[749]. συμμισούμενοι καὶ συνταλαίπωροι: Tertullian, adv. Marc. Bk IV. cc. 9, 30.

[750]. See Neander, Ch. Hist. vol. II. pp. 151 sqq. and Matter, Hist. du Gnost. t. II. pp. 298, 304.

[751]. Eznig of Goghp, from whose History of the Armenian Church quotation has been made above. He says that Marcion taught that there were three heavens, in the highest of which dwelt the Good God, in the next the God of the (Jewish) Law, and in the third his angels. Below this lay Hyle or Matter who existed independently and was female. From the union of the God of the Law and Hyle, this earth was produced, after which its Father retired to his own heaven, leaving the earth to the rule of Hyle. When he desired to make man, Hyle supplied the dust of which he was formed, into which the God of the Law breathed his own spirit. Adam became the adorer of Hyle, upon which the God of the Law informed him that, if he worshipped any other God but him, he should die. On this Adam withdrew from Hyle, and this last, becoming jealous, made a number of gods and filled the world with them. Hence all men were cast into hell at death, until the Good God looked down from the highest heaven, had pity on them, and sent his Son to deliver the “spirits in prison,” which He did directly He went down into hell after His own death. After Jesus had revealed Himself to the Creator and received his confession of ignorance, Jesus illuminated Paul and made him His apostle. It is extremely unlikely that this story should have formed part of Marcion’s own teaching, although it may possibly have been told by some follower of his of Semitic blood, or, as Salmon suggests, by Cerdo. It is to be found in Neumann’s translation of Eznig in the Zeitschr. für hist. Theol. vol. IV. and in the Dict. Christian Biog. s.v. Marcion.

[752]. Tertullian, adv. Marc. Bk I. c. 16.

[753]. Epiphanius, Haer. XLII. p. 688, Oehler, says Marcion was succeeded by Lucian, whom Apelles followed. Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk VII. cc. 37, 38, p. 393, Cruice, is probably the source of Epiphanius’ statement; but he does not seem to have had any first-hand knowledge of the Marcionite heresy or its chiefs, and is not here so good a witness as Tertullian, or Irenaeus, who mentions neither Lucian nor Apelles.

[754]. Tertullian, de Praescript. c. XXX.

[755]. Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. Bk IV. c. 13.

[756]. ἐδημιούργησε τὰ γενόμενα. Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk VII. c. 37, p. 393, Cruice.

[757]. Epiphanius, Haer. XLII. p. 694, Oehler. The same Logion or saying is also found in Clem. Alex. Strom. Bk I. c. 28, in the Apostolical Constitutions, Bk II. c. 37, and in Clem. Hom. XVIII. c. 20.

[758]. Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. Bk V. c. 13.

[759]. Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 26, § 1, p. 220, Harvey. According to Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk VIII. c. 16, p. 416, Cruice, he had been a disciple of Justin Martyr.

[760]. Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk VII. c. 31, p. 382, Cruice.

[761]. Eusebius, op. et loc. cit. supra.

[762]. Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk VII. c. 37, p. 393, Cruice; Epiphanius, Haer. XLIII. p. 688, Oehler.

[763]. Tertullian, de Resurrectione, c. II.

[764]. Eusebius, Vita Constantini, Bk III. cc. 64-66.

[765]. So Salmon in Dict. Christian Biog. and Harnack in Encyclopaedia Britannica, both s.v. Marcion.

[766]. Hatch, H.L. p. 77, n. 1, quoting Harnack.

[767]. Hatch, op. cit. pp. 75, 76, shows that the allegorical method introduced by the Gnostics in order to avoid the difficulty of reconciling the Old Testament with the New was at first scornfully rejected, but was soon adopted by the orthodox, and was pursued by both Catholic and Protestant writers up to a few years ago.

[768]. Droysen, Hist. de l’Hellénisme, t. II. pp. 33, 289.

[769]. Op. cit. III. pp. 351, 352; 439, 450. As Droysen points out, in this respect there was no practical difference between Parthian and Persian.

[770]. As in B.C. 41, when the Parthians under Pacorus “rushed” Palestine. See Morrison, The Jews under the Romans, p. 58, for authorities. Cf. Chapter V. Vol. I. p. 101, n. 3, supra.

[771]. This is shown by, among other things, the claims of the kings of Armenia, Cappadocia, and Pontus to be descended from the seven heroes who delivered Persia from the Magians after the death of Cambyses. See Droysen, op. cit. II. p. 519; III. pp. 82, 83.

[772]. Droysen, op. cit. III. p. 83.

[773]. Horace, Odes, Bk IV. Ode 5. Cf. his Carmen Seculare.

[774]. Renan, L’Antéchrist, pp. 317, 318, for authorities. A critical essay on the Neronic myth and its congeners is to be found in Dr Charles’ Ascension of Isaiah, p. li sqq.

[775]. Gibbon, Decline and Fall (Bury’s ed.), vol. I. pp. 5, 205.

[776]. Gibbon, op. cit. I. p. 209. Severus’ victories are doubted by Gibbon; and Prof. Bury apparently supports his author.

[777]. Op. cit. I. pp. 269, 270. Prof. Bury in his Appendix 17 points out that the whole history of Valerian’s capture is still very obscure.

[778]. Op. cit. I. p. 340.

[779]. Op. cit. I. p. 375. See Prof. Bury’s note 83 on page cited.

[780]. Op. cit. II. pp. 228-231.

[781]. Op. cit. I. p. 373.

[782]. Gibbon, op. cit. V. pp. 78 sqq. Winwood Reade, Martyrdom of Man, pp. 249, 250, tells the story excellently and dramatically.

[783]. Horace, Odes, Bk I. Ode 38.

[784]. Gibbon, op. cit. I. p. 382. Cf. Cumont, Religions Orientales, p. 171. Lactantius, de Mort. Persecutor. c. XXI., says that this was the conscious aim of Galerius. Although his authority in such a matter is suspect, there can be little doubt of the fact.

[785]. The actual decree of the emperors is given in Cumont, Textes et Monuments, t. II. inscr. 367. The date should probably be 304 A.D. See n. on Table of Dates, Vol. I. supra.

[786]. Plutarch, Vit. Pomp. c. XXIV.

[787]. Cumont, Rel. Or. pp. 167, 168; 173, 174; id. T. et M. I. pp. 9, 10. Cf. P.S.B.A. 1912, pp. 127, 128.

[788]. Cumont, T. et M. I. p. 247.

[789]. Dill, Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius, pp. 593-597.

[790]. Cumont, T. et M. I. p. 248.

[791]. For the list see Cumont, T. et M. I. p. 258, n. 7. He thinks the worship was first introduced here by the legions from Germany.

[792]. Avezou and Picard, “Bas-relief Mithriaque,” R.H.R. t. LXIV. (Sept. Oct. 1911), pp. 179 sqq.

[793]. Cumont, T. et M. I. p. 223, n. 2.

[794]. Herodotus, Bk I. c. 131. Cf. F. Max Müller, Hibbert Lectures, p. 276. The similarity of name between Varuna and the Greek Ouranos is fairly obvious. Prof. Hope Moulton, Early Zoroastrianism, 1913, pp. 391, 392, n. 3, argues that the Persian god of the sky was called Dyaush or Zeus.

[795]. Certainly of the Mitannians, who, according to Prof. Hugo Winckler, were one of the two main branches of the Hittites, and a Syrian people. See his report on Excavations at Boghaz Keui in the Mitteilungen of the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft for 1907. The text is given in the J.R.A.S. for 1910, pp. 723 sqq.

[796]. If we accept the latest theory which makes Russia the original home of the Aryan race (see Zaborowski, Les Peuples Aryens d’Asie et d’Europe, Paris, 1908, p. 424) it may have even had a European origin.

[797]. Cumont, T. et M. I. p. 225.

[798]. James Darmesteter, Essais Orientaux, Paris, 1883, p. 113.

[799]. Casartelli, La Philosophie Religieuse du Mazdéisme sous les Sassanides, pp. 17, 18.

[800]. Op. cit. p. 73.

[801]. 660-583 B.C. See A. V. Williams Jackson, Zoroaster, N.Y. 1901, p. 15 and Appx II. and III. Cf. D. Menant, “Parsis et Parsisme,” Conférences au Musée Guimet (Bibl. de Vulgarisation), 1904, t. XVI. 1ère Ptie, p. 149.

[802]. Darmesteter, Le Zend Avesta (Annales du Musée Guimet), Paris, 1892, p. xxvii, for dates. West, Pahlavi Texts, pt I. (Sacred Books of the East), pp. lxviii-lxix; pt II. p. xxiv. Cf. Hope Moulton, op. cit. pp. 126, 127.

[803]. Herodotus, Bk III. c. 61 sqq.

[804]. The Sculptures and Inscriptions of Darius the Great at Behistun, British Museum Publications, 1907.

[805]. Op. cit. pp. 8, 9.

[806]. Op. cit. p. 14.

[807]. Maspero, Hist. Ancienne des Peuples de l’Orient Classique, Paris, 1899, t. III. p. 674; Rawlinson, History of Herodotus, 1862, vol. II. p. 458.

[808]. Herodotus, Bk I. c. 140; VII. c. 113.

[809]. Op. cit. Bk I. c. 131.

[810]. Plutarch, de Is. et Os. c. XLVI.

[811]. As in the book called “The Illumination of Bel” found in Assurbanipal’s Library at Kuyunjik. See Sayce, “Astronomy and Astrology of the ancient Babylonians and Assyrians,” T.S.B.A. vol. III. pp. 146 sqq. Cf. Chapter III, vol. I. p. 114 supra for examples.

[812]. That tables were actually used for this purpose, was shown in the Pall Mall Magazine for August, 1896 and with more detail in Star-Lore for April, 1897.

[813]. Dill, Nero to Marcus Aurelius, pp. 449, 450, for authorities.

[814]. Circa 270 A.D. See Cumont, T. et M. I. p. 26.

[815]. See Chap. III, Vol. I. p. 103, n. 4, supra.

[816]. See Chap. IV, Vol. I. p. 123 supra.

[817]. Cumont, T. et M. I. pp. 19-20, relies on a passage quoted by Damascius from a certain Eudemos who may or may not be Eudemos of Rhodes (Alexander’s contemporary) that, “of the Magi and all the warrior [or Medic: ἄρειον] race some call the intelligible” [i.e. that which can be apprehended by the mind only and not by the senses] “and united universe Topos (place), while others of them call it Chronos (Time), and that from this universe are to be distinguished a good God and evil demon; or as some say, prior to these, Light and Darkness.” “Both the one and the other school therefore,” Damascius goes on, “after the undivided Nature, make the double series of the higher powers distinct from one another, of one of which they make Oromasdes the leader, and of the other Arimanius.” It seems evident from the above words, that only a certain sect of the Magi in the time of this Eudemos put Time at the head of their pantheon. Cf. Cory’s Ancient Fragments, 1832, pp. 318, 319.

[818]. Cumont, T. et M. I. p. 19.

[819]. See “The Lion-headed God of the Mithraic Mysteries,” P.S.B.A. 1912, pp. 125-142, and p. 251 infra.

[820]. Darmesteter, Ormuzd et Ahriman, Paris, 1877, p. 1, quoting a lost book of Aristotle mentioned by Diogenes Laertius.

[821]. Cumont, T. et M. II. p. 326 and Fig. 193.

[822]. Op. cit. II. p. 336, reproduced in the article in the P.S.B.A. quoted in n. 2, p. [237] supra. In the collection of busts of the gods on the arch surrounding the Tauroctony at Bologna, the head of Zeus wearing the modius of Serapis appears with six others who, reading from left to right, are the Sun, Saturn, Venus, Jupiter, Mercury, Mars and the Moon. Although Jupiter here occupies the centre and place of honour, it is probable that both he and the other gods are here merely symbols of the planets. See Cumont, op. cit. II. p. 261 and Fig. 99.

[823]. Op. cit. II. p. 349, and Pl. VI. So in the bas-relief of Sarrebourg, unfortunately much mutilated (op. cit. II. p. 514), a similar assembly of gods includes Neptune, Bacchus, and Vulcan, who are certainly not gods of the planets.

[824]. For these inscriptions, see Cumont, op. cit. t. II., Inscriptions 80 (p. 107), 129 (p. 115), 318 (p. 140), 386 (p. 149), 522 (p. 167), and 470 (p. 160).

[825]. Op. cit. II. p. 98.

[826]. Op. cit. II. p. 141.

[827]. Op. cit. II. pp. 160, 392, 393, and article in P.S.B.A. quoted in n. 2, p. [237] supra.

[828]. Plutarch, de Is. et Os. c. XLVI. Cf. Origen, adv. Cels. Bk I. c. 60.

[829]. Herodotus, Bk VII. c. 114.

[830]. Clem. Alex. Strom. Bk V. c. 11, says Zeus is the same as Hades. He quotes Euripides as authority for the statement, but I do not know the play in which it appears. He also, op. cit. Bk V. c. 14, quotes Xenocrates as saying that there is an “Upper and Lower” Zeus.

[831]. Heracles, of course, applied compulsion to Hades. For the magic compulsion of the same power, see the Magic Papyrus of the Bibl. Nat. in Wessely’s Griech. Zauberpap. p. 38.

[832]. P.S.B.A. 1912, p. 137, for authorities.

[833]. Jean Reville, La Religion à Rome sous les Sevères, Paris, 1886, p. 30.

[834]. Cumont, T. et M. II. p. 91, no. 2; p. 99, nos. 30, 34; p. 102, no. 49; p. 103, no. 53.

[835]. Op. cit. II. p. 99, no. 29.

[836]. Op. cit. II. p. 105, no. 62; p. 116, no. 131.

[837]. Op. cit. II. p. 96, nos. 17, 20; p. 117, no. 139; p. 145, no. 354.

[838]. Pindar, Isthm. V. 1, where the Sun is said to be the son of Theia.

[839]. Cumont, T. et M. I. p. 225, and n. 1; cf. Darmesteter, Ormuzd et Ahriman, p. 65.

[840]. Cumont, T. et M. I. p. 231.

[841]. Op. cit. I. p. 200.

[842]. Op. cit. I. pp. 304-306. The best and clearest example of these scenes is perhaps that given in the bas-reliefs surrounding the Tauroctony in the Mithraeum at Osterburken. See Op. cit. II. p. 350 (Monument 246).

[843]. Op. cit. II. Fig. 1 of Mon. 246 (p. 350).

[844]. Op. cit. I. pp. 159 sqq.

[845]. Cumont, op. cit. II. p. 395, and Fig. 315.

[846]. Op. cit. II. p. 350, f (2) of Osterburken.

[847]. It is not invariable, as the sculptor was sometimes evidently governed by considerations of space.

[848]. Op. cit. II. p. 350, f (5) of Osterburken. Cf. Mon. 245, Pl. V (Neuenheim) and Mon. 251, Pl. VII (Heddernheim).

[849]. West, Pahlavi Texts, Pt 1, S.B.E. p. 20 (Bundahish); Porphyry, de antro nympharum, c. 18. Cf. Döllinger, J. und H. I. p. 419, and Tiele, Religion of the Iranian Peoples (Eng. ed.), Bombay, 1912, Pt 1, p. 113.

[850]. Cumont, T. et M. II. p. 298, Fig. 154 (Sarmizegetusa); p. 309, Fig. 167 (Apulum); p. 326, Fig. 193 (Sissek). Döllinger, J. und H. I. p. 141, thinks this cup-shaped boat represents the Moon. But see against this Cumont, op. cit. I. pp. 167, 168.

[851]. Cumont, T. et M. II. p. 515 and Pl. IX, Mon. 273 ter d (8) (Sarrebourg). Cf. ibid. II. p. 310, Fig. 168, Mon. 192 bis b (7), also I. p. 167 and n. 5.

[852]. Op. cit. II. p. 346, e (1) and Pl. V (Neuenheim); II. p. 350, f (3) (Osterburken); II. p. 339, b (6) and Pl. IV (Mauls).

[853]. Op. cit. II. p. 309, a (1) (Apulum); II. p. 326, b (3) and Fig. 193 (Sissek).

[854]. Op. cit. II. p. 346, e (4) (Neuenheim); II. p. 309, a (2) (Apulum); II. p. 515, d (10) (Sarrebourg).

[855]. Cumont, op. cit. I. p. 304, puts these scenes in a slightly different order. That followed here is that adopted in the Mithraeum at Heddernheim, op. cit. II. Pl. VII, where the sequence is fairly plain.

[856]. Op. cit. II. p. 365, d (7) (Heddernheim).

[857]. Op. cit. II. p. 338, c (5) (Klagenfurt).

[858]. Op. cit. II. p. 350, f (8) (Osterburken).

[859]. Op. cit. I. p. 172.

[860]. Op. cit. II. p. 272, c (2) (Serdica); II. pp. 303, 304, c (1) (Temesvar); II. p. 326, b (1) (Sissek).

[861]. Op. cit. II. p. 337, c. (4) (Klagenfurt).

[862]. Op. cit. I. p. 173.

[863]. Op. cit. II. p. 201.

[864]. Cumont, op. cit. I. p. 173, and n. 3.

[865]. Most of the monuments show the remains of colour.

[866]. Like the thrust of the Spanish bull-fighter which is supposed to split the heart.

[867]. Sometimes, though very rarely, the serpent is absent, as in the Mithraeum discovered at Krotzenburg near Hanau. Op. cit. II. p. 353.

[868]. Cumont, op. cit. I. pp. 207, 208. Following the mention by Dionysius the Areopagite of a “threefold Mithras,” M. Cumont thinks that the two torch-bearing figures are representations of Mithras himself. The theory is ingenious, but not very plausible. See loc. cit. pp. 208-213.

[869]. Op. cit. I. p. 186, for authorities. Cf. Döllinger, J. und H. I. p. 420. Tiele, Rel. of Iran. P. pt 1, p. 118, says that “originally” the bull was slain not by Ahriman, but by its creator.

[870]. Op. cit. I. p. 197. Cf. Porphyry, de antro nymphar. c. XVIII.

[871]. D. Menant, “Les Rites Funéraires,” Conférences au Musée Guimet, t. XXXV. pp. 181, 182.

[872]. Cf. Plutarch, de Is. et Os. c. XLVII.

[873]. So Cumont, T. et M. I. pp. 182, 305.

[874]. Op. cit. I. p. 192.

[875]. Op. cit. II. Pl. VIII.

[876]. Op. cit. I. p. 175, Fig. 10, where some of the guests at the banquet wear the masks of crows and other animals corresponding to the Mithraic degrees.

[877]. Justin Martyr, First Apology, c. LVI.

[878]. Cumont, T. et M. II. Pl VIII, shows this most clearly. Pl. V (Neuenheim), Fig 213, opposite p. 337 (Virunum), and p. 278, Fig. 121 (Orsova), leave no doubt possible.

[879]. Cumont, op. cit. I. p. 178, and Fig. 11.

[880]. The Juppiter Optimus Maximus of the Palazzo Altieri. Op. cit. II. p. 104.

[881]. Darmesteter, Ormuzd et Ahriman, p. 65.

[882]. Porphyry, de antro nympharum, c. XXIV.

[883]. Op. cit. cc. V. VI.

[884]. Plutarch, de Is. et Os. c. XLVI.

[885]. Porphyry, de antro nymph. c. XXIV.

[886]. Op. cit. cc. V. VI.

[887]. Cumont, T. et M. I. pp. 198 sqq. Damascius (in Cory’s Ancient Fragments, 1832, p. 319) attributes to the “Sidonians” a theogony which would make “Otos,” said by Cory to mean the Night Raven, the Νοῦς νοητός born from Aer and Aura. Has this anything to do with the symbolism of the crow, found always as the attendant of Mithras at the Tauroctony?

[888]. Söderblom, La Vie Future d’après le Mazdéisme, Paris, 1901, pp. 265, 266, for authorities. Cf. Casartelli, La Philosophie Religieuse du Mazdéisme, p. 186.

[889]. Cumont, T. et M. I. p. 168. He relies on a fragment of Dion Chrysostom which does not appear to have this meaning. See ibid. II. p. 64.

[890]. M. Cumont, op. cit. I. p. 82, says that the sex is left undecided, so as to show that Infinite Time, the Supreme God according to him of the Mithraic pantheon, can produce by himself. This is certainly not the case with one of the statues given among his own monuments (op. cit. II. p. 213, Fig. 44), or that lately recovered from the Mithraeum at Sidon, for which see Pottier, “La Collection Louis de Clercq,” Conférences au Musée Guimet, Bibl. de Vulg. t. XIX. 1906, Pl. opp. p. 236, or P.S.B.A. 1912, Pl. XIX, Fig. 18, or Cumont, Les Mystères de Mithra, Bruxelles, 1913, p. 235.

[891]. Cumont, T. et M. II. p. 213, Figs. 43, 44.

[892]. Op. cit. II. p. 216, Fig. 47; p. 238, Fig. 68; p. 259, Fig. 96.

[893]. Op. cit. II. p. 196, Fig. 22. A hole in the back of the head, made apparently for “fire-breathing” purposes, was found in the Sidon statue also. See Cumont, Les Mystères, fig. 27.

[894]. T. et M. II. p. 375.

[895]. Op. cit. I. p. 78.

[896]. The only evidence that he produces of this last fact is a quotation from Damascius, whose authority seems to be “Eudemus the Peripatetic,” given in n. 4, p. [236] supra, that some of the Magi call the νοητὸν ἅπαν καὶ τὸ ἡνωμένον Topos and others Chronos. A good divinity and an evil demon according to the same author descend from this power, one of whom he says is called Oromasdes and the other Arimanius. It is not very clear how much of this is Eudemus and how much Damascius. No other author gives any hint that would allow us to attribute so early an age to Zervanism.

[897]. P.S.B.A. 1912, pp. 139-142.

[898]. Firmicus Maternus, de errore, c. IV. See Cumont, T. et M. I. p. 140, n. 7.

[899]. They are mentioned together in the great Magical Papyrus of the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris, Wessely, Griechische Zauberp. p. 73.

[900]. Cumont, T. et M. I. p. 141.

[901]. The absence of any corresponding statue of the goddess is perhaps accounted for by the misogynic character of the Mithraic worship. Yet an empty niche corresponding to the one containing the lion-headed figure appears in some Mithraea.

[902]. Neander, Ch. Hist. II. p. 7 and note.

[903]. Plutarch, de Is. et Os. c. XLV.

[904]. Cumont, T. et M. I. p. 5, quoting West, Pahlavi Texts, Pt V. p. xxvi, 50.

[905]. F. Rosenberg, Le Livre de Zoroastre, St Petersburg, I. p. 10, and n. 3, says that the reform of Zoroaster was specially directed to the abolition of the worship of Ahriman.

[906]. Cumont, T. et M. II. Monument 246, e (5) Osterburken, and others as in t. I. p. 157 and n. 3. Cf. also Pl. XVI, Fig. 7, in P.S.B.A. 1912.

[907]. The Orphic invocation of the Titans referred to in Chap. IV, vol. I. p. [116], n. 3 supra can be thus explained.

[908]. Cumont, T. et M. II. p. 215, Fig. 46 (Pl. XVIII, Fig. 13 of P.S.B.A. 1912); II. p. 238, Fig. 68 (Pl. XVIII, Fig. 15 of P.S.B.A. 1912).

[909]. So in the leaden dirae from Cyprus now in the British Museum the Lord of Hell is invoked as “the god who is set over the gate of hell and the keys of heaven.” P.S.B.A. t. XIII., 1891, p. 177.

[910]. Cumont, T. et M. I. p. 294.

[911]. Wessely, Griechische Zauberp. pp. 32 sqq.

[912]. Georges Lafaye, “L’Initiation Mithriaque,” Conférences au Musée Guimet, t. XVIII. 1906, pp. 98 sqq.

[913]. Wessely, Gr. Zauberp. Op. cit. in note 2 supra, and Lafaye, op. cit. passim.

[914]. Wessely, op. cit. p. 61.

[915]. See [Chapter IX], p. [108] supra.

[916]. Lafaye, L’In. Mith. pp. 111, 112, goes further and says that both Gnostics and Manichaeans derived their doctrine from Mithraism, which formed a half-way house between Paganism and Christianity. But see [Chapter XIII], infra.

[917]. Origen, adv. Cels. Bk VI. c. 22. For “musical” there should probably be read mystical, the τ being easily omitted by a copyist.

[918]. Cumont, T. et M. I. p. 38.

[919]. Charles, Bk of the Secrets of Enoch, pp. xxx sqq.

[920]. The Greek Apocalypse of Baruch, published by James in Cambridge Texts and Studies, vol. V. No. 1, p. 44.

[921]. adv. Cels. Bk VI. c. 22. He has, however, got the order wrong, as copper is generally associated with the planet Venus, tin with Jupiter, iron with Mars, silver with the Moon, gold with the Sun, and lead with Saturn.

[922]. Bouché Leclercq, L’Astrologie Grecque, p. 23, for authorities.

[923]. Op. cit. p. 276. Cf. Cumont, T. et M. I. p. 40.

[924]. Porphyry, de Abstinentia, Bk IV. c. 16.

[925]. Cumont, T. et M. I. p. 129, n. 6, for list of monuments.

[926]. Op. et loc. cit.; id. Rel. Or. p. 179.

[927]. See p. [234], supra. The figure of the divine archer in the winged disk which figured on the coins called darics is, perhaps, the exception which proves the rule. Or is this meant for the Fravashi or genius of the king? Cf. Hope Moulton, Early Zoroastrianism, p. 260.

[928]. Somewhere about 204 B.C. See Cumont, Rel. Or. p. 58.

[929]. Orelli, Inscpt. Latinar. selectar. Turin, 1828, vol. I. pp. 406-412.

[930]. See Cumont, T. et M. II. p. 95, inscr. 15, p. 98, inscr. 23; p. 100 inscr. 40; p. 101, inscr. 41. The tomb of Vincentius in the Catacomb of Praetextatus at Rome would show an instance of the joint worship of Sabazius, the consort of the Great Mother, and of Mithras, if we could trust Garrucci’s restoration, for which see his Les Mystères du Syncrétisme Phrygien, Paris, 1854. It has been quoted in this sense by Hatch, H.L. p. 290; but Cumont, T. et M. II. pp. 173 and 413, argues against this construction. For the pictures themselves, see Maass, Orpheus, München, 1895, pp. 221, 222.

[931]. Cumont, T. et M. II. p. 261, Fig. 99.

[932]. Kenyon, Gk. Papyri, p. 65.

[933]. This is the more likely because his second initiator bears the name of Asinius, which, as he himself says (Apuleius, Metamorph. Bk XI. c. 27), was not unconnected with his own transformation into the shape of an ass. The Emperor Commodus was initiated into both religions (Lampricius, Commodus, c. IΧ.).

[934]. See n. 1, p. [259], supra.

[935]. Dill, Nero to Marcus Aurelius, p. 625, n. 3, quoting Gasquet, Mithras, p. 137. See also Gibbon, vol. III. p. 498, Bury (Appendix 15).

[936]. Justin Martyr, First Apology, c. LXVI.

[937]. Porphyry, de antro nymph. c. 15. Tertullian, de Praescpt. c. 40.

[938]. Porphyry, op. et loc. cit.

[939]. See Cumont, T. et M. I. p. 339, for authorities.

[940]. Augustine, In Johann. evang. tractatus, VII. or Cumont, T. et M. II. p. 59. This last thinks it more probable that the passage refers to Attis, as there is an allusion in it to redemption by blood. But this would hardly apply to the self-mutilation of the Galli, while it would to the blood-bath of the Taurobolium and Criobolium which so many high initiates of Mithras boast of undergoing.

[941]. J. Maurice, “La Dynastie Solaire des Seconds Flaviens,” Rev. Archeol. t. XVII. (1911), p. 397 and n. 1.

[942]. Cumont, T. et M. I. p. 339, quoting Minucius Felix.

[943]. Op. cit. I. p. 65.

[944]. The remains of five Mithraea were found in Ostia alone.

[945]. Cumont, T. et M. II. p. 204, Fig. 30, and p. 493, Fig. 430; or P.S.B.A. 1912, Pl. XIII. Figs. 1 and 2.

[946]. Cumont, T. et M. I. p. 62.

[947]. The story quoted from Pseudo-Augustine (Cumont, op. cit. I. p. 322) about the hands of the initiates being bound with chickens’-guts which were afterwards severed by a sword might account for the number of birds’ bones.

[948]. Cumont, op. cit. II. p. 21, gives the passage from Lampridius mentioned in n. 1, p. [260], supra.

[949]. Op. cit. I. p. 322, quoting Zacharius rhetor.

[950]. See Chapter II, Vol. I. p. 62, supra.

[951]. Cumont, T. et M. II. p. 18, for the passage in St Jerome in which these degrees are enumerated. They all appear in the inscriptions given by Cumont, except that of Miles or Soldier. An inscription by two “soldiers” of Mithras has, however, lately been found at Patras and published by its discoverers, M. Charles Avezou and M. Charles Picard. See R.H.R. t. LXIV. (1911), pp. 179-183.

[952]. Cumont, T. et M. I. pp. 315 sqq.

[953]. Tertullian, de Corona, c. 15.

[954]. Porphyry, de antro nymph. c. 15.

[955]. Cumont, T. et M. I. p. 322. Gregory of Nazianza (A.D. 320-390) is the first authority for these tortures (κολάσεις) in point of time. Nonnus the Mythographer gives more details, but is three centuries later.

[956]. Renan, Marc-Aurèle, p. 577.

[957]. Cumont, T. et M. I. p. 73.

[958]. Op. cit. II. p. 294, Fig. 149; p. 298, Fig. 154; p. 300, Fig. 156; p. 304, Fig. 161; p. 488, Fig. 421.

[959]. Op. cit. I. p. 175, Fig. 10.

[960]. Op. cit. I. p. 39, n. 6, quoting the Arda Viraf namak. A quotation from Arnobius, adv. gentes, which follows, merely says that the Magi boast of their ability to smooth the believers’ passage to heaven.

[961]. See [Chap. VIII], p. [74], n. 3, supra.

[962]. That those who had taken the degree of Pater were called ἀετοί or eagles appears from Porphyry, de Abstinentia, Bk IV. c. 16. Cumont doubts this; see T. et M. I. p. 314, n. 8. The idea probably had its origin in the belief common to classical antiquity that the eagle alone could fly to the sun, from which the Mithraist thought that the souls of men came, and to which those of perfect initiates would return. Cf. op. cit. I. p. 291.

[963]. Lafaye, L’Initiation Mithriaque, p. 106.

[964]. Cumont, T. et M. II. p. 56.

[965]. Porphyry, de Abstinentia, Bk IV. c. 16 says this was so.

[966]. Cumont, T. et M. I. p. 318, n. 1, points out that an initiate might become Pater Patrum immediately after being made Pater or Pater sacrorum simply. This appears from the two monuments both dated the same year of Vettius Agorius Praetextatus, op. cit. II. p. 95.

[967]. See Ammianus Marcellinus Bk XXII. c. 7, for his life under Julian. His career is well described by Dill, Roman Society in the Last Century of the Western Empire, 1899, pp. 17, 18, 30, 154, 155.

[968]. Cumont, T. et M. II. p. 100, inscr. 35; p. 98, inscr. 24.

[969]. Op. cit. II. p. 130, inscr. 225; p. 132, inscr. 239; p. 134, inscr. 257. The two decurions may of course have been decurions of the rite only, as to which see op. cit. I. p. 326.

[970]. Op. cit. I. p. 324: Tertullian, Praescpt. c. 40.

[971]. Cumont, T. et M. I. p. 65. Thirty-five seems to be the greatest number belonging to any one chapel.

[972]. Op. cit. I. p. 327.

[973]. Amm. Marcell. passim.

[974]. Neander, Ch. Hist. III. p. 136.

[975]. Marinus, vita Procli, pp. 67, 68; Neander, op. cit. III. p. 136.

[976]. Witness the reduction of Mitra, who plays such an important part in the religion of the Vedas, to the far lower position of chief of the Izeds or Yazatas in the Sassanian reform.

[977]. Cumont, T. et M. I. p. 250, for authorities.

[978]. Gibbon, Decline and Fall (Bury’s ed.), I. p. 260 n. 106.

[979]. Reville, Religion sous les Sevères, p. 102.

[980]. Cumont, T. et M. I. p. 347.

[981]. Dill, Last Century, etc. p. 29, n. 2.

[982]. Cumont, T. et M. I. p. 347.

[983]. Op. cit. I. pp. 329, 330; Dill, Nero to Marcus Aurelius, p. 624.

[984]. Cumont, “L’aigle funéraire des Syriens et l’apothéose des empereurs.” R.H.R., 1910, pt ii. pp. 159 sqq.

[985]. Cf. the “solitary eagle” of the Magic Papyrus quoted on p. [265] supra.

[986]. Maury, La Magie et L’Astrologie, passim. The Zend Avesta also denounces magic as did the later Manichaeism. See p. [342] infra.

[987]. As in Shakespeare’s Macbeth.

[988]. So Cumont, T. et M. I. pp. 45, 349, 350. He seems to rely, however, entirely on the passage in the Acta Archelai (as to which see n. 1, p. [280] infra), wherein the supposed bishop Archelaus addresses the equally imaginary Manes as “Savage priest and accomplice of Mithras!”—possibly a mere term of abuse. See Hegemonius, Acta Archelai, ed. Beeson, Leipzig, 1906, c. XL. p. 59.

[989]. Cumont, T. et M. I. p. 41. He sees in the scenes which border the Tauroctony references or parallels to the fig-leaves of Genesis, the striking of the rock by Moses, and the ascension of Elijah. In the so-called Mithraic Ritual of the Magic Papyrus of Paris, there are certain Hebrew words introduced, such as πιπι (a well-known perversion of the Tetragrammaton), σανχερωβ and σεμες ιλαμ (The “Eternal Sun”).

[990]. See the story which Josephus, Antiq. XX. cc. 2, 3, 4, tells about Izates, king of Adiabene, who wanted to turn Jew and thereby so offended his people that they called in against him Vologeses or Valkash, the first reforming Zoroastrian king and collector of the books of the Zend Avesta. Cf. Darmesteter, The Zend Avesta (Sacred Books of the East), Oxford, 1895, p. xl. Cf. Ém. de Stoop La Diffusion du Manichéisme dans l’Empire romain, Gand, 1909, p. 10.

[991]. Circa 296, A.D. See Neander, Ch. Hist. II. p. 195, where the authenticity of the decree is defended. For the provocation given to the Empire by the anti-militarism of Manes see de Stoop, op. cit. pp. 36, 37.

[992]. Al-Bîrûnî, Chronology of Ancient Nations, p. 190. The date he gives is twelve years before the accession of Ardeshîr. E. Rochat, Essai sur Mani et sa Doctrine, Genève, 1897, p. 81, examines all the different accounts and makes the date from 214 to 218 A.D.

[993]. Epiphanius, Haer. LXVI. c. 1, p. 399, Oehler; Socrates, Hist. Eccl. Bk I. c. 22; Hegemonius, Acta Archelai, c. LXIV.

[994]. Muhammed ben Ishak, commonly called En-Nadîm, in the book known as the Fihrist, translated by Flügel, Mani, seine Lehre und seine Schriften, Leipzig, 1862, pp. 83, 116, 118, 119. Cf. Rochat, op. cit. p. 75.

[995]. Al-Bîrûnî, Chronology, p. 190.

[996]. Flügel, op. cit. p. 84; Rochat, op. cit. p. 83.

[997]. Hegemonius, Acta Arch. c. XL., p. 59, Beeson. Rochat, op. cit. pp. 9-49, discusses the authenticity of the Acta chapter by chapter. He thinks the pretended discussion between Archelaus and Manes unhistorical, and the account of it possibly modelled on that between St Augustine and Faustus the Manichaean. The remainder of the Acta he considers fairly trustworthy as an account of Manes’ own tenets. This may well be, as Epiphanius, Haer. LXVI. cc. 6-7, 25-31, transcribes the epistle to Marcellus, its answer, and the exposition of Turbo, and could scarcely have heard, as early as 375 A.D., about which time he wrote, of St Augustine’s discussion. The Acta owe much to the care of the American scholar, Mr Beeson of Chicago, who has given us the careful edition of them mentioned in n. 1, p. [277] supra. It is a pity that he did not see his way to keep the old numeration of the chapters.

[998]. Beausobre, Hist. du Manichéisme, Paris, 1734, Pt I. Bk II. cc. 1-4. Cf. Stokes in Dict. Christian Biog. s.v. Manes; Rochat, op. cit. p. 83.

[999]. Rochat, op. cit. p. 89.

[1000]. Abulfarag in Kessler, Forschungen über die Manichäische Religion, Berlin, 1889, Bd I. p. 335; Rochat, op. cit. p. 84; Neander, Ch. Hist. II. p. 168.

[1001]. Flügel, op. cit. p. 85. Cf. Al-Bîrûnî, India (ed. Sachau), p. 55, where Manes quotes the opinion of Bardesanes’ “partizans.” There are many words put into the mouth of Manes in the work quoted which argue acquaintance with the Pistis Sophia.

[1002]. Abulmaali in Kessler, op. cit. p. 371; Firdaûsi, ibid. p. 375; Mirkhônd, ibid. p. 379. Cf. Rochat, op. cit. p. 81. He is said to have painted his pictures in a cave in Turkestan (Stokes in Dict. Christian Biog. s.v. Manes), which would agree well enough with the late German discoveries at Turfan, for which see A. von Le Coq in J.R.A.S. 1909, pp. 299 sqq.

[1003]. Flügel, op. cit. p. 85.

[1004]. Al-Jakûbi in Kessler, op. cit. pp. 328, 329; cf. Rochat, op. cit. p. 88.

[1005]. Al-Bîrûnî, Chronology, pp. 191, 192.

[1006]. Rochat, op. cit. p. 89. Al-Bîrûnî, whom he quotes, however, says merely that the Manichaeans increased under Ormuz, and also that Ormuz “killed a number of them.” See last note.

[1007]. Al-Jakûbi in Kessler, op. cit. p. 330. But Darmesteter (see passage quoted in n. 2, p. [284] infra) puts this event as happening after Ormuz’ death and under Shapur II.

[1008]. Al-Bîrûnî, Chronology, p. 191. The town is called Djundi-sâbur or Gundisabur.

[1009]. Al-Jakûbi, ubi cit. supra; Eutychius quoted by Stokes, Dict. Christian Biog. s.v. Manes.

[1010]. Rochat, op. cit. p. 93, examines all the evidence for this and comes to the conclusion given in the text.

[1011]. Malcolm, History of Persia, London, 1821, Vol. I. pp. 95, 96.

[1012]. G. Rawlinson, The 6th Oriental Monarchy, 1873, p. 222; Rochat, op. cit. p. 53.

[1013]. See [Chap. XII] supra, p. [232].

[1014]. See n. 1, p. [278] supra.

[1015]. Al-Bîrûnî, Chron. p. 187, makes Manes the successor or continuator of Bardesanes and Marcion. This was certainly not so; but it was probably only from their followers that he derived any acquaintance with Christianity. See n. 7, p. [280] supra. So Muhammad or Mahommed, four centuries later, drew his ideas of the same faith from the heretics of his day.

[1016]. Rhys Davids, Buddhist India, 1903, p. 318, says that after 300 A.D. Buddhism was everywhere in decay in India.

[1017]. Rochat, op. cit. p. 58.

[1018]. Darmesteter, Zend Avesta, pp. xl, xli.

[1019]. Op. cit. pp. xlvii sqq.

[1020]. Al-Bîrûnî, Chron. p. 192.

[1021]. Elisaeus Vartabed in Langlois’ Collection des Hist. de l’Arménie, Paris, 1868, t. II. p. 190. The story is repeated almost word for word by Eznig of Goghp, ibid. p. 875. Cf. Neander, Ch. Hist. II. p. 171.

[1022]. Rochat, op. cit., following Kessler, shows, it seems, conclusively, that this is another name for Manes’ father, Fatak or Patecius.

[1023]. She was a courtezan at Hypselis in the Thebaid according to Epiphanius, Haer. LXVI. c. 11, p. 400, Oehler. As Baur, Die Manichäische Religionssystem, Tübingen, 1831, p. 468 sqq. has pointed out, this is probably an imitation of the story told about Simon Magus and his Helena (see Chap. VI supra). It seems to have arisen as an embroidery, quite in Epiphanius’ manner, upon the story in the Acta, that Scythianus married a captive from the Upper Thebaid (Hegemonius, op. cit. c. LXII. p. 90, Beeson).

[1024]. Many guesses have been made as to the allusions concealed under these names, as to which see Rochat, op. cit. pp. 64-73. Neander (Ch. Hist. II. p. 16) quotes from Ritter the suggestion that Terebinthus may come from an epithet of Buddha, Tere-hintu “Lord of the Hindus.” One wonders whether it might not have been as fitly given to a Jewish slave sold at the Fair of the Terebinth with which Hadrian closed his war of extermination.

[1025]. These four books may have been intended for the Shapurakhan, the Treasure, the Gospel and the Capitularies, which Al-Bîrûnî, Chron. p. 171, attributes to Mani. Cf. Epiphanius, Haer. LXVI. c. 2, p. 402, Oehler, and the Scholia of Théodore bar Khôni in Pognon, Inscriptions Mandaïtes des Coupes de Khouabir, pp. 182, 183.

[1026]. Epiphanius, op. cit. c. 1, p. 398, Oehler.

[1027]. Colditz in Kessler, op. cit. pp. 15, 16. Cf. Rochat, op. cit. pp. 65, 66.

[1028]. Morrison, Jews under Romans, p. 325 for authorities. Philo, de Vit. Contempl. etc. c. III. says that similar communities existed in his time near the Mareotic lake in Egypt. But the date of the treatise and its attribution to Philo are alike uncertain. The first mention of Buddha in Greek literature is said to be that by Clem. Alex. Strom. Bk I. c. 15.

[1029]. Harnack in Encyc. Britann. 9th edition, s.v. Manichaeans, p. 48, says “There is not a single point in Manichaeism which demands for its explanation an appeal to Buddhism.” This may be, but the discoveries at Turfan and Tun-huang have made a connection between the two more probable than appeared at the time he wrote. See also Kessler as quoted by Rochat, op. cit. pp. 192, 193.

[1030]. This appears from the Chinese Treatise at Pekin mentioned later. See p. [293], n. 2.

[1031]. Rochat, op. cit. p. 194. So Socrates, Eccl. Hist. Bk I. c. 22, calls Manichaeism “a sort of heathen (Ἑλληνίζων) Christianity.”

[1032]. Hegemonius, Acta, c. VII. p. 91, Beeson; Flügel, op. cit. p. 86.

[1033]. Certainly none is recorded in the Christian accounts, where Darkness is called Hyle or Matter. En Nadîm (Flügel, op. cit. p. 86) makes Manes call the good God “the King of the Paradise of Light” and (p. 90) the Spirit of Darkness, Hummâma. Schahrastâni, as quoted in Flügel’s note (p. 240), makes this word mean “mirk” or “smoke” (Qualm). It would be curious if Hummâma had any connection with the Elamite Khumbaba, the opponent of the Babylonian hero Gilgamesh, because this personage already figures in Ctesias’ story about Nannaros, which has been recognized as a myth relating to the Moon-god.

[1034]. τὸ τῆς ὕλης δημιούργημα Hegemonius, Acta, c. VIII. p. 9, Beeson. Cf. Alexander of Lycopolis, adv. Manichaeos, c. II.

[1035]. Epiph. Haer. LXVI. c. 6, p. 408, Oehler; Hegemonius, Acta, c. V. pp. 5-7, Beeson. The authenticity of the letter is defended by Kessler, op. cit. p. 166. Cf. Rochat, op. cit. p. 94 contra.

[1036]. τῶν κακῶν ἐπὶ τὸν θεὸν ἀναφέρουσιν, ὧν τὸ τέλος κατάρας ἐγγύς. It is evidently intended for a quotation from Heb. vi. 8, which however puts it rather differently as ἐκφέρουσα δὲ ἀκάνθας καὶ τριβόλους ἀδόκιμος καὶ κατάρας ἐγγύς, ἧς τὸ τέλος εἰς καῦσιν. “But that which beareth thorns and briers is to be rejected and is nigh unto cursing; whose end is to be burned.” The Khuastuanîft or Manichaean confession mentioned later repeats this phrase about God not being the creator of evil as well as of good. See p. [335] infra.

[1037]. Hegemonius, Acta, c. VII. p. 9, Beeson.

[1038]. En Nadîm in Kessler, op. cit. pp. 386, sqq. Kessler’s translation of En Nadîm, which is given in the first Appendix to the work quoted, differs slightly from that of Flügel and depends on a somewhat better text than the last-named. It is therefore used when possible in the remaining notes to this chapter. Flügel’s book, however, has the advantage of a commentary of some 300 pages marked with great erudition, and must still be consulted by anyone wishing to be acquainted with its subject.

[1039]. Plutarch, de Is. et Os. c. XLV., says, however, that “evil must have a principle of its own,” so that it cannot be the work of a benevolent being. As he is generally supposed to have taken his account of the Persian teaching from Theopompos of Chios, who was at the Court of Ptolemy about 305 B.C., his evidence is against those who, like M. Cumont, would make the “Zervanist” opinion, which assumes a common principle for good and evil, pre-Christian. Yet the point does not yet seem capable of decision, as Plutarch may here be only giving us his own opinion.

[1040]. Casartelli, op. cit. p. 44.

[1041]. This is really the crux of the whole question. If the idea could be traced back to the philosophers of Ionia (e.g. Heraclitus of Ephesus) and their theory of eternal strife and discord being the cause of all mundane phenomena, it is difficult to say whence the Ionians themselves derived it, save from Persia. We can, of course, suppose, if we please, that the Persians did not invent it de novo, but took it over from some of their subjects. Among these, the Babylonians, for instance, from the earliest times portrayed their demons as not only attempting to invade the heaven of the gods, but as being in perpetual warfare with one another. But the very little we know of Babylonian philosophy would lead us to think that it inclined towards pantheism of a materialistic kind rather than to dualism.

[1042]. En Nadîm, in Kessler, op. cit. p. 387; Flügel, op. cit. p. 86.

[1043]. The likeness of this to the cosmogony of the Ophites and their successor Valentinus is of course marked (cf. Chaps. [VIII] and [IX] supra). Manes may have borrowed it directly from Valentinus’ follower Bardesanes, whose doctrines were powerful in Edessa and Mesopotamia in his time, or he may have taken it at first-hand from Persian or Babylonian tradition. That Manes was acquainted with Bardesanes’ doctrines, see n. 7, p. [280] supra.

[1044]. En Nadîm in Kessler, op. cit. p. 387; Flügel, op. cit. p. 86. Flügel’s text adds to these members other “souls” which he names Love, Belief, Faith, Generosity, and Wisdom. Kessler substitutes Courage for Generosity and seems to make these “souls” the members’ derivatives.

[1045]. See last note.

[1046]. See [Chapter XII], p. [251] supra. Here, again, the traditional and monstrous figure of Satan may have been copied from the sculptured representations of the composite demons of Babylonia (e.g. Rogers, Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, Frontispiece and Figs. 1 and 13). Yet if we take the Mithraic lion, as M. Cumont would have us do, as the symbol of fire and the serpent as that of the earth, we have in the five sorts of animals the five στοιχεῖα or elements of Aristotle. Cf. Aetius, de Placitis Philosophorum, ed. Didot, Bk I. c. iii. § 38 (Plutarch, Moralia, II.), p. 1069. Yet the nearest source from which Manes could have borrowed the idea is certainly Bardesanes, who, according to Bar Khôni and another Syriac author, taught that the world was made from five substances, i.e. fire, air, water, light and darkness. See Pognon, op. cit. p. 178; Cumont, La Cosmogonie Manichéenne d’après Théodore bar Khôni, Bruxelles, 1908, p. 13, n. 2.

[1047]. En Nadîm in Kessler, op. cit. p. 388; Flügel, op. cit. p. 87. As the ancients were unacquainted with the properties of gases, it is singular that they should have formed such a conception as that of the compressibility and expansibility of spirits. Yet the idea is a very old one, and the Arabian Nights story of the Genius imprisoned in a brass bottle has its parallel in the bowls with magical inscriptions left by the Jews on the site of Babylon (Layard, Nineveh and Babylon, 1853, pp. 509 sqq.), between pairs of which demons were thought to be imprisoned. Cf. Pognon, op. cit. p. 3. Something of the kind seems indicated in the “Little Point,” from which all material powers spring, referred to by Hippolytus and the Bruce Papyrus.

[1048]. So in the Pistis Sophia, it is the “last Parastates” or assistant world who breathes light into the Kerasmos, and thus sets on foot the scheme of redemption. Cf. Chapter X, p. [146] supra.

[1049]. Yet the Fundamental Epistle speaks of the twelve “members” of God, which seem to convey the same idea See Aug. c. Ep. Fund. c. 13.

[1050]. Thus En Nadîm in Kessler, op. cit. pp. 388, 389; Flügel, op. cit. p. 87. But here the Christian tradition gives more details than the Mahommedan. Hegemonius, Acta, c. VII., p. 10, Beeson, and Bar Khôni (Pognon, p. 185), are in accord that the God of Light produced from himself a new Power called the Μήτηρ τῆς Ζωῆς or Mother of Life, that this Mother of Life projected the First Man, and that the First Man produced the five elements called also his “sons,” to wit, wind, light, water, fire and air, with which he clothed himself as with armour. See Cumont, Cosmog. Manich. p. 16, n. 4, for the harmonizing of the texts [N.B. the omission of πῦρ from his quotation from the Acta is doubtless a clerical error]. The identification of the Mother of Life with the “Spirit of the Right [Hand]” is accepted by Bousset, Hauptprobleme, pp. 177, 178, and may be accounted for by the crude figure by which the Egyptians explained the coming-forth of the universe from a single male power. See Budge, Hieratic Papyri in the Brit. Mus. p. 17.

[1051]. These were also the “sons” of Darkness or Satan. See Bar Khôni (Pognon, p. 186). The reason that led the God of Light to send a champion into the lists was, according to Bar Khôni (Pognon, p. 185), that the five worlds of his creation were made for peace and tranquillity and could therefore not help him directly in the matter. Cf. St Augustine, de Natura Boni, c. XLII. But Manes doubtless found it necessary to work into his system the figure of the First Man which we have already seen prominent in the Ophite system. Cumont, Cosmog. Manich. p. 16, says few conceptions were more widely spread throughout the East. It is fully examined by Bousset, Hauptprobleme, in his IVth chapter, “Der Urmensch.” The First Man is, in the Chinese treatise lately found at Tun-huang in circumstances to be presently mentioned, identified with the Persian Ormuzd and the five elements are there declared to be his sons. See Chavannes and Pelliot, Un Traité Manichéen retrouvé en Chine, pt 1, Journal Asiatique, série X., t. XVIII. (1911), pp. 512, 513. The 12 elements which helped in his formation seem to be mentioned by no other author than En Nadîm. St Augustine, however, Contra Epistulam Fundamenti, c. 13, speaks of the “12 members of light.” The Tun-huang treatise also mentions “the 12 great kings of victorious form” whom it seems to liken to the 12 hours of the day. As the Pistis Sophia does the same with the “12 Aeons” who are apparently the signs of the Zodiac, it is possible that we here have a sort of super-celestial Zodiac belonging to the Paradise of Light, of which that in our sky is a copy. It should be remembered that in the Asiatic cosmogonies the fixed stars belong to the realm of good as the representatives of order, while the planets or “wanderers” are generally evil.

[1052]. En Nadîm in Kessler, op. cit. p. 389; Flügel, op. cit. pp. 87, 88. According to the Christian tradition, the Powers of Darkness devoured only the soul of the First Man which was left below when his body, as will presently be seen, returned to the upper world. See Hegemonius, Acta, c. VII., p. 10, Beeson.

[1053]. Both the Christian and the Mahommedan traditions agree as to this result of the fight, which is paralleled not only by the more or leas successful attempt of Jaldabaoth and his powers to eat the light of Pistis Sophia, but also by a similar case in orthodox Zoroastrianism. For all these see Cumont, Cosmog. Manich. p. 18, n. 4. Bar Khôni (Pognon, p. 186), goes further and describes the surrender of the First Man as a tactical effort on his part, “as a man who having an enemy puts poison in a cake and gives it to him.” Alexander of Lycopolis (adv. Manich. c. III.), on the other hand declares that God could not avenge himself upon matter (as he calls Darkness) as he wished, because he had no evil at hand to help him, “since evil does not exist in the house and abode of God”; that he therefore sent the soul into matter which will eventually permeate it and be the death of it; but that in the meantime the soul is changed for the worse and participates in the evil of matter, “as in a dirty vessel the contents suffer change.” These, however, are more likely to be the ideas of the Christian accusers than the defences of the Manichaean teachers.

[1054]. En Nadîm in Kessler, op. cit. pp. 389, 390; Flügel, op. cit. p. 87. As Kessler points out, En Nadîm gives two accounts doubtless taken from different Manichaean sources. In one, he says simply that the King of the Paradise of Light followed with other gods and delivered the First Man, the actual victor over Darkness being called “the Friend” of the Lights (like Mithras). He then goes on to say that Joy (i.e. the Mother of Life) and the Spirit of Life went to the frontier, looked into the abyss of hell and saw the First Man and his powers were held enlaced by Satan, “the Presumptuous Oppressor and the Life of Darkness”; then she called him in a loud and clear voice, and he became a god, after which he returned and “cut the roots of the Dark Powers.” For Bar Khôni’s amplification of this story see p. 302, n. 1, and p. [324] infra. The whole of this, together with the cutting of the roots, is strongly reminiscent of the Pistis Sophia.

[1055]. En Nadîm in Kessler, op. cit. pp. 391, 392; Flügel, op. cit. p. 98. The Acta (Hegemonius, op. cit. c. VIII., p. 11, Beeson) say that the “Living Spirit” before mentioned “created the Cosmos, descended clothed with three other powers, drew forth the rulers (οἱ ἄρχοντες) and crucified them in the firmament which is their body the Sphere.” “Then he created the lights (φωστῆρες) which are the remnants of the soul, caused the firmament to encompass them, and again created the earth [not the Cosmos] with its eight aspects.” The Latin version after “earth” adds “they (sic!) are eight.” which if it refers to the aspects would agree with En Nadîm. Alexander of Lycopolis (adv. Manich. c. III.), who had been a follower of Manes and was a Christian bishop some 25 years after Manes’ death, says that “God sent forth another power which we call the Demiurge or creator of all things; that this Demiurge in creating the Cosmos separated from matter as much power as was unstained, and from it made the Sun and Moon; and that the slightly stained matter became the stars and the expanse of heaven.” “The matter from which the Sun and Moon were taken,” he goes on to say, “was cast out of the Cosmos and resembles night” [Qy the Outer Darkness?], while the rest of the “elements” consists of light and matter unequally mingled. Bar Khôni (Pognon, op. cit. p. 188), as will presently be seen, says that the Living Spirit with the Mother of Life and two other powers called the Appellant and Respondent [evidently the “three other powers” of the Acta] descended to earth, caused the Rulers or Princes to be killed and flayed, and that out of their skins the Mother of Life made 11 heavens, while their bodies were cast on to the earth of darkness and made 8 earths. The Living Spirit then made the Sun, the Moon, and “thousands of Lights” (i.e. Stars) out of the light he took from the Rulers. That this last story is an elaboration of the earlier ones seems likely, and the flaying of the Rulers seems to be reminiscent of the Babylonian legend of Bel and Tiamat, an echo of which is also to be found in the later Avestic literature. See West, Pahlavi Texts (S.B.E.), pt iii. p. 243. Cf. Cumont, Cosmog. Manich. p. 27, n. 2.

[1056]. En Nadîm in Kessler, op. cit. p. 392; Flügel, op. cit. pp. 89-90. This would agree perfectly with the system of the Pistis Sophia, where it is said that the “receivers of the Sun and Moon” give the particles of the light as it is won from matter to Melchizedek, the purifier, who purifies it before taking it into the Treasure-house (pp. 36, 37, Copt.). The idea that the Sun’s rays had a purifying effect shows shrewd observation of nature before his bactericidal power was discovered by science. So does the association of the Moon with water, which doubtless came from the phenomenon of the tides. Is the Column of Glory the Milky Way?

[1057]. The Ecpyrosis or final conflagration is always present in orthodox Mazdeism, where it inspires its Apocalypses, and is in effect the necessary conclusion to the drama which begins with the assault on the world of light by Ahriman. For references, see Söderblom, op. cit. chap. IV. From the Persians it probably passed to the Stoics and thus reached the Western world slightly in advance of Christianity. “The day when the Great Dragon shall be judged” is continually on the lips of the authors of the Pistis Sophia and the Μέρος τευχῶν Σωτῆρος, and the conception may therefore have reached Manes from two sources at once. The angels maintaining the world as mentioned in the text are of course the Splenditenens and Omophorus about to be described.

[1058]. Hegemonius, Acta, c. VIII. p. 12, Beeson. St Augustine (contra Faustum, Bk XX. c. 10) mentions the Wheel briefly and rather obscurely. It seems to have fallen out of the account of Bar Khôni. But see the Tun-huang treatise (Chavannes et Pelliot, op. cit. 1ère partie, pp. 515, n. 2, 516, 517, n. 3). There can be little doubt that it is to be referred to the Zodiac. The Aeons of the Light seem to be the five worlds who here play the part of the Parastatae in the Pistis Sophia.

[1059]. Hegemonius, Acta, c. VIII. pp. 11, 12, Beeson, mentions Omophorus, but not Splenditenens. Splenditenens is, however, well known to St Augustine, who describes him (contra Faustum, Bk XV. c. 7) as Splenditenentem magnum, sex vultus et ora ferentem, micantemque lumine, “Great Splenditenens, bearing six faces and mouths, and glittering with light.” So later (op. cit. Bk XX. c. 9) he says, Splenditenentem, reliquias eorumdem membrorum Dei vestri in manu habentem, et cetera omnia capta, oppressa, inquinata plangentem, et Atlantem maximum subter humeris suis cum eo ferentem, ne totum ille fatigatus abjiciat. “Splenditenens, who has in his hand the remains of these members of your God [i.e. the five elements or ‘sons’ of the First Man] and who mourns the capture and oppression and defilement of all the rest; and huge Atlas, who bears everything with him on his shoulders, lest he should be wearied and cast it away.” Bar Khôni (Pognon, pp. 188, 189) describes them both, and calls Splenditenens “the Ornament of Splendour,” while he makes the pair two of the five sons of the Living Spirit, as more clearly appears in the Tunhuang treatise (Chavannes et Pelliot, op. cit. p. 549, and notes 2 and 5). Where Manes found the figure of Splenditenens is not apparent, but the world-bearing angel is an old conception in Western Asia, as M. Cumont has shown in his before-quoted Cosmogonie Manichéenne, App. II. He appears prominently on the Mithraic monuments and was no doubt the original of the Greek Atlas.

[1060]. Alexander of Lycopolis, op. cit. c. III., says plainly that the Sun and Moon were formed out of that part of the light (here called δύναμις “power”), which, although it had been captured by the powers of matter, had not been contaminated, while that which had suffered some slight and moderate stain became the stars and sky. The Acta (Hegemonius, op. cit. c. VIII. p. 11, Beeson), as we have seen, says that the Living Spirit created the lights (φωστῆρες, luminaria), which are the remnants of the soul (i.e. the armour of the First Man) and caused the firmament to surround them. The author here evidently refers to the Sun and Moon only.

[1061]. The whole of this story, which is the reverse of edifying, is studied by M. Cumont, with the fullest references to the authorities, in his Cosmogonie Manichéenne before quoted, to which it forms Appendix I, under the heading “La Séduction des Archontes.” To this I must refer the reader, only remarking that, while I fully agree that the goddess in question is probably derived from the Mother of the Gods who under the name (inter alia) of Atargatis was worshipped throughout Asia Minor, I do not see that she had any connection with the “Virgin of Light” of the Pistis Sophia. This Virgin of Light did, indeed, pass into Manichaeism, but she had there a very different name and attributes from the Mother of the Gods. See p. [323], n. 4 infra.

[1062]. En Nadîm in Kessler, op. cit. p. 393; Flügel, op. cit. pp. 90, 91.

[1063]. Kessler, op. et pag. cit. n. 1, says it has dropped out of the text, which seems likely.

[1064]. Hegemonius, Acta, c. XII. pp. 19, 20, Beeson. The story is given verbatim later, p. [306] infra.

[1065]. The Mandaeans or Disciples of St John described on p. 305 seem a likely source, as they have many traditions about the protoplasts, some of which clearly go back to before the Christian Era. None of those mentioned by Brandt, Die Mandäische Religion, Leipzig, 1889, pp. 34-39, however, seem to be exactly similar to the story in the text.

[1066]. This Mother of Life is one of the most prominent, though not one of the most active figures in the Manichaean pantheon. Her identification with the Spirit of the Right Hand or first Power created by the Supreme God of Light has been mentioned above (note 1, p. [293] supra). She doubtless has her immediate origin in the great mother goddess worshipped throughout Western Asia, whose most familiar name is Cybele, but whom we have seen (Chap. II supra) identified with Isis, Demeter, and all the goddesses of the Hellenistic pantheon. See as to this, Bousset, Hauptprobleme, pp. 58 sqq., although he, too, falls into the error of identifying with her the Virgin of Light of the Pistis Sophia. That the name “Mother of Life” at least passed to all these goddesses is certain; but it also found its way into Egyptian Christianity; for in the Coptic spell or amulet known as the Prayer of the Virgin in Bartos (i.e. Parthia), studied by Mr W. E. Crum (P.S.B.A. vol. XIX. 1897, p. 216), the Virgin Mary is represented as saying “I am Mariham (Μαριάμ), I am Maria, I am the Mother of the Life of the whole World!”, and the popularity of the “Prayer” is shown by its frequent appearance in Ethiopic and Arabic versions (op. cit. p. 211). So, too, in the evidently Christian Trattato Gnostico of F. Rossi (Memorie della Reale Accademia di Torino, ser. II. t. xliii. p. 16) the magician says “I entreat thee, O God, by the great revered Virgin (παρθένος) in whom the Father was concealed from the beginning before He had created anything.” Bar Khôni, again (Pognon, pp. 209-211), speaks of the Kukeans, who seem to have been a semi-Christian sect, and who taught that the coming of Jesus to earth had for its object the redemption of His bride, the Mother of Life, who was detained here below, like the Helena of Simon Magus. Mother of Life is mentioned in all the Mahommedan and Christian writers who have treated of Manichaeism (for the references, see Chavannes et Pelliot, op. cit. 1ère partie, p. 511, n. 1), in the Pahlavi MS. discovered by the Germans at Turfan (F. W. K. Muller, Handschriften-Reste in Estrangelo-Schrift, pp. 47, 55), and in the Chinese treatise from Tun-huang (Chavannes et Pelliot, op. cit. p. 511 et al.). In this last, she is called Chan-mou, which is translated “the Excellent Mother,” and En Nadîm in one passage (Kessler, op. cit. p. 399; Flügel, op. cit. p. 100) calls her Nahnaha, which Flügel would translate “The Aversion of the Evil Ones.” It should be noticed, however, that her part in the cosmogony is small, and that she acts upon the world, like all these supercelestial powers, only through her descendants or “sons.” These are treated of later (see p. [323] and n. 1, p. [302] infra). Titus of Bostra as quoted by Flügel, op. cit. p. 210, speaks of her as δύναμις τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ οὐκέτι φῶς αἰσθητὸν ἀλλ’ ὡς ἂν φαίη προβολὴ τοῦ θεοῦ. “[The] Power of the Good One, no longer a perceptible light, but as if one should say, an emanation of God.” Some years ago, we could hardly have looked for her prototype or first appearance in the history of religions in any other direction than Babylonia, where the worship of Ishtar, her Babylonian counterpart, goes back as far as we can trace Babylonian religion. Now, however, it is plain that other races than the Babylonians may have been concerned in the spread of the worship of the Great Mother throughout Western Asia. In the Zoroastrian faith, she seems to appear as Spenta Armaiti, the one certainly female power among the seven Amshaspands, who in the Pahlavi texts is set over the earth, as Vohu Mano is made protector of the beasts, Asha Vahishta of the fire, and Khshathra Vairya is set over metals. But besides this, she is identified in the Gâthâs with the Wisdom of God (for references see pp. 136-137 of M. Carnoy’s article in the Muséon mentioned below), an identification which Plutarch (de Is. et Os. c. XLVII.) admits by translating her name as σοφία, and like the Sophia of the Gnostics is given as a spouse to her creator Ahura Mazda, to whom she bears the First Man Gayômort (Darmesteter, Le Zend-Avesta, t. I. pp. 128-129). Yet we now know that this figure may have come into the Zoroastrian pantheon neither from Semitic sources nor, as Darmesteter thought, from Plato. M. A. Carnoy in a study called Armaiti-Ârmatay (Muséon, n.s. vol. XIII. (1912), pp. 127-146) shows the identity of the Persian Amshaspand with the Vedic goddess Aramati. We have already seen that the Vedic gods Varuna and Mitra were worshipped by Hittites in Asia Minor before the XIIth century B.C., and Prof. Garstang believes that the Earth-Mother was the great goddess of the Hittites, and was the one worshipped in Roman times at Hierapolis or Mabug as the Dea Syria or Atargatis, a name that he equates with Derceto, the mother of Semiramis in classic legend, and declares to be compounded of Ishtar or Astarte and the Aramaic “Athar or Athe.” See Strong and Garstang, The Syrian Goddess, pp. 1-8, and notes 24, 25, and 30, on pp. 52, 53 and 30 op. cit. Zoroaster and Manes may therefore have taken their mother goddess from an Aryan rather than from a Semitic original.

[1067]. This Living Spirit is the most active agent of the Light in the Manichaean system, and seems to have held his place unaltered through all the changes of Manichaean teaching. Alexander of Lycopolis (contra Manich. c. III.) speaks of him as the Δημιουργός or Architect of the Universe. The earliest part of the Acta (Hegemonius, c. VII. p. 10, Beeson) says that he was put forth from the Father (or Supreme God of Light) in consequence of the prayers of the First Man after his defeat, that he delivered this last, crucified or bound the Archons in the firmament (as Jeû is said to have done in the Pistis Sophia), made the Sun and Moon and appointed their courses, and further made the eight earths. St Augustine, contra Faustum, Bk XX. c. 1, makes the Manichaean Faustus call him the “Third Majesty whom we acknowledge to have his seat and his lodging-place in the whole circle of the atmosphere. From whose powers and spiritual inpouring also, the earth conceived and brought forth the suffering Jesus who is the life and salvation of men and is hanging on every tree.” St Augustine further speaks (op. cit. Bk XX. c. 9) of “your mighty (potentem for viventem) Spirit, who constructs the world from the captive bodies of the race of darkness or rather from the members of your God held in subjection and bondage.” St Augustine (see contra Faustum, Bk XV. c. 6) also knows that the Living Spirit has, like the First Man, five sons, to whom we shall return later. The Mahommedan writers have much less to say on the subject. En Nadîm (Kessler, op. cit. p. 390; Flügel, op. cit. p. 88) says abruptly that “Joy [i.e. the Mother of Life] and the Spirit of Life went to the frontier, looked into the abyss of hell and saw there the First Man and his angels,” whereupon the Spirit of Life called the First Man with a voice of thunder and the latter “became a god.” This story is so without connection with the context that Kessler is probably right in attributing it to another source from that from which the Fihrist has drawn up to this point. The source in question was probably a late one; for Bar Khôni (op. cit. pp. 186-188) supplies many more details which will be given in the text. Bar Khôni also amplifies the story in the Fihrist into a description of how the Living Spirit, on seeing the First Man in the Darkness, spoke “a word which took the appearance of a pointed sword” (cf. Revelation i. 16), and how this word caused to appear the image of the First Man. A dialogue then ensues between apparently the sword and the image, which appear to be here identified with the Appellant and Respondent of later Manichaeism, and the pair are drawn up out of hell. See Cumont, Cosmog. Manich. p. 24, and note 5. Al Bîrûnî, Chronology, p. 190, also knows of the Spirit of Life and says that Manes “preached” of him. In the Turfan texts there is occasional mention of the “Spirit” together with the Father and the Son (Müller, Handschriften-Reste, pp. 26, 28), and also of the “commands” of the Holy Spirit to the Hearers, which are plainly allusions to the Living Spirit or Ζῶν Πνεῦμα of the Christian Fathers. In the Tun-huang treatise (Chavannes et Pelliot, op. cit. pp. 510, 556) he is repeatedly mentioned, and although nothing is said of his demiurgic or world-creating powers, the part which he and the Mother of Life play in the rescue of the First Man after his defeat is recognized, and he is spoken of as forming the third person of a Trinity of which the two other members are the Father or highest God of Light and the “Son of the Light.” Finally (op. cit. p. 557), he is said to be “a white dove,” whereby his likeness to the Holy Spirit of the Christian Trinity already noted by Faustus is emphasized (see Augustine, ubi cit. supra and Bk XX. c. 6).

[1068]. This conception of Jesus as a warrior has already been seen in the Pistis Sophia, see p. [156] supra. So we read of “Jesus the victorious” in the Tun-huang treatise, p. 566, n. 3.

[1069]. En Nadîm in Kessler, op. cit. pp. 393 sqq.; Flügel, op. cit. pp. 90 sqq. Theodore bar Khôni (Pognon, op. cit. pp. 189 sqq.), gives a much more elaborate account of the creation of man and the other animals, for which and for its explanation the reader must be referred to the elaborate analysis of M. Cumont (Cosmog. Manich. pp. 34-49, and App. II., “La Séduction des Archontes”). It should be noted, however, that some part of this story was known to St Augustine. See especially contra Faustum, Bk VI. c. 8.

[1070]. So Rochat, op. cit. pp. 157, 158.

[1071]. Kessler, op. cit. pp. 72, 80; Brandt, Mandäische Religion, p. 178.

[1072]. Rochat, op. cit. pp. 156-178, has carefully examined the resemblances between the system of Manes and that of the Mandaites and declares that it is at present impossible to say which of them has borrowed from the other.

[1073]. Hegemonius, Acta, c. XII., pp. 19, 20, Beeson.

[1074]. Op. cit. c. VIII., p. 12, Beeson.

[1075]. Chavannes et Pelliot (op. cit. p. 517, n. 3) make this the work of the Living Spirit, but they are clearly wrong. The text of the Acta referred to in the last note leaves no doubt that it is that of the “Son.”

[1076]. Hegemonius, Acta, c. XI., p. 18, Beeson.

[1077]. This is the tradition evidently known to the author of the Μέρος τευχῶν Σωτῆρος when he makes Jesus say “When I spoke with Enoch out of the Tree of Knowledge in the Paradise of Adam.” (See [Chap. X], p. [173] supra.)

[1078]. Al Bîrûnî, Chronology, p. 190.

[1079]. Hegemonius, Acta, c. IX., p. 14, Beeson. This idea of the macrocosm and microcosm according to which the body of man is a replica of the universe is found in nearly all later mysticism—also in the Cabala and in the later Zoroastrian treatises. In the Tun-huang treatise it forms the chief theme of the homiletic part of the work.

[1080]. Op. cit. c. VIII., pp. 12, 13, Beeson. The Latin version has vir “man” for aer “air” in its description of the Column of Glory. Probably a clerical error.

[1081]. Op. cit. c. X., pp. 15, 16, Beeson. The word used is κέλεφος; but the Latin texts all read “elephant.”

[1082]. Ἐρῶ ... πῶς μεταγγίζεται ἡ ψυχὴ εἰς πέντε σώματα, op. et cap. cit. p. 15, Beeson.

[1083]. The soul of the rich man is in the same chapter said to pass into the body of a beggar and thereafter εἰς κόλασιν αἰώνιον “to everlasting punishment.” Is it from this source that the Calvinists took their doctrine of eternal damnation? The reprobation of the rich as such and without regard to the use they might make of their wealth perhaps accounts for the levelling and republican politics of the mediaeval sectaries.

[1084]. The Bowl of water reminds one of the cup of soberness and reflection administered to just souls by the little Sabaoth the Good in the Μέρος τευχῶν Σωτῆρος. See [Chap. X], p. [187] supra. The garment was probably the “heavenly nature” with which the soul had to be clothed before it could ascend to the upper spheres of light (cf. the Pistis Sophia). That the crown was designed as a protection against the spirits of evil, there are many indications in the last-mentioned document.

[1085]. Kessler would here read “gods” for “goddess.”

[1086]. That is to say, the particular world of light, whether Gentleness, Knowledge, Intelligence, Discretion, or Discernment, from which the soul descended. As the “armour” of the First Man, from which the souls of men are formed, was made with the aid of these five worlds, it is reasonable to suppose that one or other predominates in the soul of everyone. Hence probably the degree in the Manichaean hierarchy to which any hearer might attain was thought to be decided for him before his birth, and governed his destination after death. Thus it is said in the Pistis Sophia: “Those who have received exalted mysteries shall be in exalted places, and those who have received humble mysteries in humble places in the light of my kingdom.” Cf. Chavannes et Pelliot, op. cit. 1ère partie, p. 533, n. 1 and St Augustine as there quoted.

[1087]. The words given in the text are almost verbatim from En Nadîm. See Kessler, op. cit. pp. 398-399; Flügel, op. cit. p. 100.

[1088]. One of the 21 Nasks of the Sassanian Avesta.

[1089]. Söderblom, op. cit. p. 83.

[1090]. Op. cit. pp. 89 sqq.

[1091]. See the Orphic belief about the uninitiated being plunged in mud, Vol. I. chap. IV. p. 131 supra.

[1092]. Kessler, op. cit. pp. 399-400; Flügel, pp. 100-101.

[1093]. This is, I think, the only construction to be put on the words of the Acta: τῆς δὲ ψυχῆς ἐστι τὰ ὀνόματα ταῦτα, νοῦς, ἔννοια, φρόνησις, ἐνθύμησις, λογισμός. Hegemonius, Acta, c. X., p. 15, Beeson. For the Mahommedan tradition, see En Nadîm in Flügel, op. cit. p. 95. The whole question of the organization of the Manichaean Church is elaborately discussed by Flügel in n. 225 on this passage, op. cit. pp. 293-299.

[1094]. Kessler, op. cit. p. 398; Flügel, op. cit. pp. 94, 95.

[1095]. This is perhaps the first instance in antiquity of the Gospel of Work. That these virtues of the believer are made five in number, so as to accord with the five worlds of light, needs no demonstration.

[1096]. See passages from Kessler and Flügel quoted in n. 1, p. [313] supra.

[1097]. Rainerio Saccone, a Manichaean Perfect in Languedoc, who afterwards turned Inquisitor, said that he had often heard the Elect lamenting that they had not taken the opportunity of committing more sins before receiving the “Baptism of the Spirit” which was thought to wash them away. See H. C. Lea, History of the Inquisition, vol. I., p. 94.

[1098]. Flügel, op. cit. pp. 95-97. See, however, n. 4, p. [349] infra.

[1099]. Josephus, Antiquities, Bk XX. cc. 2-4, breaks off his history at the critical point. The Book of Esther is, perhaps, sufficient proof of the capacity of the Oriental Jews for provoking periodical pogroms at least as freely as their co-religionists in modern Russia. Johnson (Oriental Religions), Persia, 1885, p. 410, quotes, apparently from Firdûsi, that the “old Persian nobles” were driven by Ardeshîr’s reforms into Seistan, where they were the ancestors of the present Afghan clans. As some of these clans call themselves the Beni Israel, it is possible that the Jews rather than the nobles were expelled on this occasion, as happened before under Cyrus.

[1100]. Hegemonius, Acta, c. XII. pp. 20-21, Beeson; Ephraem Syrus in Kessler, op. cit. p. 302. For Mahommedan confirmation, see Schahrastâni in op. cit. p. 339.

[1101]. Al Bîrûnî, Chronology, p. 190.

[1102]. See Le Coq’s Short Account in J.R.A.S. 1909, pp. 299-322. Another and more popularly written one by the same author appeared in the Conférences au Musée Guimet, Paris, 1910 (Bibl. de Vulgarisation, t. XXXV.).

[1103]. The Marcionites, another much hated sect, also used a secret script.

[1104]. St Augustine, contra Faustum, Bk V. c. 1.

[1105]. Hegemonius, Acta, c. V., pp. 5, 6.

[1106]. Augustine, contra Faust. Bk VII. c. 1.

[1107]. Op. cit. Bk XXIII. c. 2; ibid. Bk XXXII. c. 7.

[1108]. Op. cit. Bk XXVI. cc. 6, 8; ibid. Bk XXIX. c. 1.

[1109]. Op. cit. Bk XX. c. 2.

[1110]. Cumont, Cosmog. Manich. p. 15, points out that the Manichaeans had already figured to themselves their King of the Paradise of Light as existing in the three Persons of Father, Mother, and Son in the shape of the Light, the Mother of Life and the First Man. This Trinity corresponds in every particular with that worshipped in Asia Minor under the names of Zeus (or Hadad), Cybele, and Atys, at Eleusis as Dionysos, Demeter, and Iacchos, in Greek Egypt as Osiris, Isis, and Horus, and in Persia, according to M. Cumont, as Ormuzd, Spenta Armaiti, and Gayômort. Cf. Bousset, Hauptprobleme, pp. 333-337. That its origin can be traced, as the last-named author seems to think, to the Babylonian Triad, Ea, Damkina, and Marduk, is more doubtful. The Manichaeans really acknowledged, as they were never tired of affirming, only two gods, Light and Darkness, and considered all the lesser powers of Light, including man’s soul, as formed from God’s “substance.” When, therefore, they spoke of trinities, tetrads, and so on, it was in all probability for the purpose of producing that show of outward conformity with other religions which was one of the most marked features of their system.

[1111]. This is a reversal of the position in the Pistis Sophia, where the female power or Virgin of Light is placed in the Sun and the male Iao in the Moon.

[1112]. Compare the statement of Herodotus (Bk I. c. 131) that Zeus (or Ormuzd) in the opinion of the ancient Persians was the name of “the whole circle of air.”

[1113]. Augustine, contra Faust. Bk XX. c. 2.

[1114]. This is to be found in Harduin’s Acta Consilii. The quotation in the text is taken from Matter, Hist. de Gnost. t. III. p. 89, and Neander, Ch. Hist. II. p. 187.

[1115]. Pognon, op. cit. p. 5; Assemani, Bibl. Orient. t. III. p. 198 cit.

[1116]. Cumont, Cosmog. Manich. p. 106. It seems probable that the Kashgar in question is the country in Chinese Turkestan still called by that name. M. Pelliot, however, will have none of this and insists that Bar Khôni’s Kashgar was Al Wasit near Bagdad. For the controversy, see J.R.A.S. 1913, pp. 434 sqq., 696 sqq. and 1914, pp. 421-427.

[1117]. Cumont, Cosmog. Manich. p. 1, n. 2, and authorities there quoted.

[1118]. Ἀναθεματίζω πάντας οὓς ὁ Μάνης ἀνέπλασε θεοὺς, ἤτοι τὸν τετραπρόσωπον Πατέρα τοῦ Μεγέθους καὶ τὸν λεγόμενον Πρῶτον Ἄνθρωπον ... καὶ τὸν ὀνομαζόμενον Παρθένον τοῦ φωτὸς κ.τ.λ. “I anathematize all those whom Manes lyingly makes gods, to wit, the Father of Greatness in four Persons, and the so-called First Man ... and the famous Virgin of Light,” etc., Kessler, op. cit. p. 403. His quotation of the Formula is from the works of the Apostolic Fathers edited by Cotelerius in 1724 (Amsterdam). It seems to have been administered to converts from Manichaeism to Catholicism down to a very late date. See Beausobre, Hist. du Manichéisme, t. I. pp. 66-67.

[1119]. Pognon, op. cit. p. 184. Cumont, Cosmog. Manich. pp. 9, 10, would substitute Reason for Knowledge and Will for Feeling. The Greek names as given in the Acta (Hegemonius, op. cit. c. X. p. 15, Beeson) are νοῦς, ἔννοια, φρόνησις, ἐνθύμησις, λογισμός which the Latin translator makes into mens, sensus, prudentia, intellectus, cogitatio. The first of these may pass as correct, since Nous appears as the first emanation of the Highest God in all the systems which preceded that of Manes and from which he is likely to have copied. Of the rest, it can only be said that they are the translations by scribes of Syriac or Mandaite words which were ill calculated to express metaphysical abstractions, and that their copyists were seldom well acquainted with the etymology of any of the three languages. Hence they generally made use of what they thought were the corresponding expressions in the works of great heresiologists like Irenaeus and Hippolytus without troubling themselves much as to their appropriateness. In the passage from the Acta above quoted, the five qualities named are said to be the “names of the soul,” which is explained by what is said later (op. cit. c. X. p. 17, Beeson) that “the air (ἀήρ) is the soul of men and beasts and birds and fish and creeping things.” En Nadîm (Kessler, op. cit. p. 387; Flügel, p. 86), as has been said on p. [291] supra, gives the “members of the air” as Gentleness, Knowledge, Intelligence, Discretion and Discernment, which are the same as those which he has just attributed to the King of the Paradise of Light. St Augustine (c. Faust. Bk XX. c. 15) says in like manner that the Manichaeans thought their souls “members of God,” which seems to refer to the same belief. Bar Khôni (Pognon, op. cit. p. 186), as has been said, not only assigns the five dwellings of Intelligence, Knowledge, Thought, Reflexion and Feeling to the Living Spirit, but makes him draw his five sons from them, and M. Cumont (Cosmog. Manich. p. 10, n. 3) quotes the Acta Thomae as saying that the Third Legate or Srôsh is “the Legate of the five members, Nous, Ennoia, Phronesis, Enthymesis and Logismos.” From all which we may gather that the Supreme God of Light and his “Second” and “Third” creations were each alike thought to have the same five dwellings or hypostases consisting of abstract qualities, although the exact significance of the names given to them for the present escapes us.

[1120]. This is the usual Oriental and Semitic figure of speech which leads Arabs at the present day to nickname any European with a large beard “the Father of Hair,” and makes the Sphinx of Ghizeh the “Father of Terrors.” In the same way, the Mother of Life means doubtless the Very Great Life or Source of Life.

[1121]. Cumont, Cosmog. Manich. p. 15.

[1122]. See the Khuastuanift, pp. [335], [342] infra, and the Tun-huang treatise (Chavannes et Pelliot, op. cit. p. 513, and n. 1). Cf. also Müller, Handschriften-Reste, p. 102.

[1123]. She cannot possibly be the Virgin of Light, as in the Acta she is said to retire at the Ecpyrosis into the Moon-ship along with that personage. See Hegemonius, op. cit. c. XIII. p. 21, Beeson. The name “Virgin of Light” also appears in the Turfan texts as an epithet of Jesus, if the words are not wrongly translated. See Müller, Handschriften-Reste, pp. 75, 77. The name Nahnaha given her by En Nadîm has been referred to in n. 2, p. [300] supra.

[1124]. Probably Mithras, who is in the Vedas and elsewhere called “Mithra the Friend.” Mithras is invoked under his own name in the Turfan texts (Müller, Handschriften-Reste, p. 77), but the fragment is too mutilated to be able to deduce from it his place in the pantheon.

[1125]. This name, to be found nowhere but in Bar Khôni, cannot be explained. Pognon says it may be written the Great Laban, which gets us no nearer to its meaning.

[1126]. The image is probably his body or substance, which is of the substance of the Very Great Father. So Satan is in the Coptic Trattato gnostico of Rossi quoted in n. 2, p. [300] supra described as the ἀρχηπλάσμα, probably as being the very substance of darkness as the Very Great Father is of the Light.

[1127]. This is the conjecture of M. Cumont (Cosmog. Manich. pp. 24, 25). As he says in note 5 on the first-mentioned page, the passage as it stands is inconsistent. The Appellant and Respondent under the names of Kroshtag and Padwakhtag appear in the Khuastuanift and also in the Tun-huang treatise (pp. 521 sqq.) without the part they play in the world being immediately apparent. The former document, however (see p. [343] infra), speaks of them as being concerned in the purification of the Light. MM. Chavannes and Pelliot (op. cit. p. 521, n. 1) think it possible that they may represent the portions of the “armour” of the First Man which were not sullied by contact with matter, and compare them to the last two Amshaspands, Haurvetât and Ameretât. See also their Traité Manicheen, etc. 2me ptie, in the Journal Asiatique, XI série, t. I. (1913), p. 101. One might liken them to the Cautes and Cautopates appearing in the Mithraic monuments, as to which see [Chapter XII], p. [246] supra.

[1128]. All these subordinate deities were known to St Augustine. Cf. id. c. Faust. Bk XV. c. 6.

[1129]. Evidently Manes accepted the dictum of Valentinus quoted above ([Chap. IX], p. [104] supra), that with celestial powers it is always the female who gives the form.

[1130]. Hegemonius, Acta, c. XIII, p. 21, Beeson. Αἱ δὲ προβολαὶ πᾶσαι, ὁ Ἰησοῦς ὁ ἐν τῷ μικρῷ πλοίῳ, καὶ ἡ μήτηρ τῆς ζωῆς, καὶ οἱ δώδεκα κυβερνῆται, καὶ ἡ παρθένος τοῦ φωτὸς καὶ ὁ πρεσβύτης ὁ τρίτος ὁ ἐν τῷ μεγάλῳ πλοίῳ, καὶ τὸ ζῶν πνεῦμα καὶ τὸ τεῖχος τοῦ μεγάλου πυρὸς καὶ τὸ τεῖχος τοῦ ἀνέμου, καὶ τοῦ ἀέρος, καὶ τοῦ ὕδατος, καὶ τοῦ ἔσωθεν πυρὸς τοῦ ζῶντος πρὸς τὸν μικρὸν φωστῆρα οἰκοῦσιν, ἄχρις ἂν τὸ πῦρ κατανελώσῃ τὸν κόσμον ὅλον· ἐν ποσοῖς πότε ἔτεσιν, ὧν οὐκ ἔμαθον τὴν ποσότητα. “But all the emanations [i.e.], Jesus who is in the small ship, and the Mother of Life and the 12 pilots, and the Virgin of Light, and the Third Legate who is in the large ship, and the Living Spirit and the wall [it should be ‘guardian,’ as MM. Chavannes and Pelliot explain] of the great fire, and the guardian of the Ether, and of the air, and of the water, and of the inner living fire, abide near the lesser light until the fire has consumed the whole Cosmos. But for how many years I have not learned.” The Latin version runs: Prolationes autem omnes Jesus in modica navi, et mater vitae et duodecim gubernatores et virgo lucis et senior tertius. Unde et majori in navi vivens spiritus adhibetur, et murus ignis illius magni, et murus venti et aeris et aquae et interioris ignis vivi, quae omnia in luna habitabunt usquequo totum mundum ignis absumat; in quot autem annis numerum non didici:—which appears to be nonsense. The number of years which Turbo, who is here speaking, had not learned, is said by En Nadîm to be 1468.

[1131]. Cumont, Cosmog. Manich. pp. 58 sqq. and Appendix I.

[1132]. Chavannes et Pelliot, op. cit. (1ère ptie), p. 522, and n. 1. For the part played by him in the Chinese treatise see op. cit. p. 536, and n. 2. He is called “Mighty Srôsh” in the Turfan texts (Müller, Handschriften-Reste, p. 75).

[1133]. J. Darmesteter, The Zend Avesta, part I. (S. B. E. vol. 4, pp. 87, 99) and part II. (S. B. E. vol. 23, pp. 159-167). All the passages in which he is referred to come from the Vendidad, but he is also mentioned in the Bundahish. See West, Pahlavi Texts, part I. (S. B. E. vol. 5, p. 128).

[1134]. See n. 2 supra. M. Cumont (Cosmog. Manich. p. 34) thinks that this Messenger was added to the two triads (of Father, Mother, and Son, and the Friend of the Lights, Great Ban, and Living Spirit, respectively) in order to make up “the sacred number of seven.” But seven is a number singularly neglected by the Manichaeans, who paid the greatest reverence to five, and preferred to seven the three and the twelve. Nor do I think that there is any real parallel in Manichaeism to the Seven Amshaspands of Zoroastrianism. The actual word amshaspand is used in the Tun-huang treatise (Chavannes et Pelliot, op. cit. 1ère ptie, p. 544), but with an entirely different signification from that of archangel or divinity. It seems there to mean simply “element.” Cf. Chavannes et Pelliot, op. cit. 2me partie, p. 101.

[1135]. I can find no parallel to these powers in any other system, save that of the Pistis Sophia, where appear twelve Saviours of the Treasure-house of Light, from whom the souls of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus were said to be drawn. If, therefore, they are not the signs of the Zodiac, they may be an invention of the Manichaeans to accord with the magistri or highest order of their Church (see p. [330] infra).

[1136]. Cumont, Cosmog. Manich. p. 36.

[1137]. Pognon, op. cit. pp. 189, 190. He says it was the Messenger (or Srôsh) who ordered the Great Ban to create a new world. M. Kugener, however (Cumont, Cosmog. Manich. p. 37, n. 4), says that the passage can be read as in the text, and this avoids the improbability of the younger power or Third Legate giving orders to one of the “second creation.” The three wheels, fire, water, and earth, may possibly have been conceived as surrounding the earth, as with the Ophites of the Diagram. Cf. [Chap. VIII], n. 3, p. [74] supra.

[1138]. I read this, perhaps wrongly, thus instead of Five Trees as does Pognon (op. cit. p. 191). The five kinds of trees are often referred to in the Tun-huang treatise and in the Khuastuanift.

[1139]. This Saclas, who appears many times in Greek heresiology with his wife Nebrod, called in the text Namraël (for references, see Cumont, Cosmog. Manich. p. 73, and notes 3, 4, and 5), was known to Hippolytus, who uses both names in his description of the tenets of the Peratae, a name which may be equivalent to that of the Medes. See Hipp. Philosoph. Bk V. c. 14, pp. 194, 195, Cruice.

[1140]. Chavannes et Pelliot, op. cit. 1ère ptie, p. 566, and n. 3.

[1141]. Hegemonius, Acta, c. XI. p. 18, Beeson.

[1142]. Augustine, de Haeresibus, c. 46, p. 210, Oehler. See also Chavannes et Pelliot, op. cit. 1ère ptie, p. 569, and n. 2; p. 572, and nn. 2, 3; and p. 581, and n. 4. MM. Chavannes and Pelliot discuss the question of the organization of the Manichaean Church in the second part of their memoir. See op. cit. 2me ptie, pp. 193, 196 and n. 2. They also give a dissertation on the common life of the Elect. It remains to be seen whether this was anything more than a copy of the monastic institutions of the Buddhists. For obvious reasons, such an organization was not adopted in lands where they had outwardly to conform to other religions.

[1143]. So Professor Harnack and Mr Conybeare in the Encyc. Brit. (XIth ed.), vol. XVII. p. 576, s.v. Manichaeism.

[1144]. “Beatus pater” is the name given to the Tertius legatus by Evodius, de recta fide, passim.

[1145]. Augustine, c. Faust. Bk XV. c. 5.

[1146]. Op. cit. Bk XX. c. 9.

[1147]. Cumont, Cosmog. Manich. App. 2, “L’Omophore.” He shows that this belief in an angel who supports the world on his shoulders goes back to the Assyrian cylinder-seals, where is found a world-bearing divinity in exactly the same pose as that reproduced in the Mithraic bas-reliefs.

[1148]. One of the silk banners obtained by the German expedition seems to have depicted this scene. See A. von Le Coq, Chotscho: Facsimile-Wiedergaben der Wichtigerer Funde der Ersten Kgl. Preuss. Expedition nach Turfan, Berlin, 1913, Bd 1, p. 1 and Pl. IV. 6.

[1149]. Augustine, c. Faust. Bk XX. c. 17. Is the prayer addressed to the First Man or to Splenditenens, whom St Augustine represents as mourning over the pollution of the Light?

[1150]. The praises in the text are all given by En Nadîm. See Flügel, op. cit. p. 96. Are “the two sciences” the Living Spirit and his Intelligence or Reason? If so the “Father of Majesty” probably means the Beatus Pater of note 2, p. [331] supra.

[1151]. The Mediaeval Inquisitors were in especial never tired of denouncing the immorality of the Manichaean Hearers. See H. C. Lea, History of the Inquisition, index.

[1152]. The original documents are described by Prof. A. von Le Coq in “Turkish Khuastuanift from Tun-huang,” J.R.A.S. 1911, pp. 277-279.

[1153]. There are many allusions in Manichaean literature to three worlds of light, which seem to be (1) the light inaccessible, or heaven of God; (2) the light intelligible, i.e. that can be comprehended by the mind only, which is inhabited by the First Man; and (3) the perceptible light, of which the Sun and Moon are the rulers. See especially Chavannes et Pelliot, op. cit. 1ère ptie, pp. 564 and 586, and 2me ptie, p. 102, n. 2. The Manichaeans’ addiction to the number five needs no insistence. Fifteen, i.e. 3 × 5, is therefore a number which came naturally to them.

[1154]. Shimnu seems to be the Buddhist word for “devil.” Cf. Neander, Ch. Hist. vol. II. p. 181. Prof. von Le Coq (J.R.A.S. 1911, p. 300) says it is of Soghdian origin. Chavannes et Pelliot, op. cit. 1ère ptie, p. 523, n. 3, seek to show that it is the equivalent of Ahriman.

[1155]. On this word see p. [323] supra; cf. Chavannes et Pelliot, op. cit. 1ère ptie, p. 542, n. 2, which seems to summarize all that there is to be said about it, and p. [342] infra.

[1156]. This was of course the exact statement of Zervanism, which the Khuastuanift implicitly condemns. Cf. Mihr Nerses’ proclamation in 450 A.D. quoted on p. 285 supra.

[1157]. This was the name of the owner, which was Raimast Parzind in the Tun-huang text of Sir Marc Stein.

[1158]. This was the name given to the incarnate, as distinguished from the spiritual, messengers of the God of Light to man. Thus Zoroaster is always spoken of in Manichaean literature as a Burkhan, and doubtless the historical Buddha and Jesus were included in the same category. Cf. Chavannes et Pelliot, op. cit. 1ère ptie, p. 572, n. 2.

[1159]. Obviously the authors of the Khuastuanift knew nothing of the doctrine put forth by the Manichaeans in Christian lands that the First Man offered himself as a sacrifice to destroy the sons of Darkness. Cf. n. 2, p. [294] supra.

[1160]. Because by so doing the existence of the diabolic creation would be prolonged.

[1161]. The words “of the Messenger” [God] are not in Prof. von Le Coq’s version.

[1162]. Cf. Chavannes et Pelliot, op. cit. 1ère ptie, pp. 503, n. 1. On this being mentioned in a paper in the J.R.A.S. 1913, Dr F. Denison Ross said that he thought the date should be put 300 years later, J. cit. p. 81. He has since withdrawn this (J.R.A.S. 1913, pp. 434-436).

[1163]. See the luminous historical study by M. Henri Cordier, “Les Fouilles en Asie Centrale,” Journal des Savans., Paris, 1910, pp. 219 sqq., especially pp. 249, 250.

[1164]. Chavannes et Pelliot, op. cit. 1ère ptie, p. 513, n. 1. Müller, Handschriften-Reste, pp. 20, 22. Von Le Coq, J.R.A.S. 1911, p. 301.

[1165]. Ormuzd, “the whole circuit of the sky,” although he calls him, more Graecorum, Zeus, “the sun and moon, the earth, fire, water and the winds,” were “the only gods whose worship had come down to the Persians from ancient times” in the days of Herodotus. Cf. Herodotus, Bk I. c. 131.

[1166]. Faustus (Aug. v. Faust. Bk II. c. 4) distinctly says “Jesus Christ is the son of the First Man.” Cf. also c. 5.

[1167]. It is very doubtful whether it is referred to or not in the Tun-huang treatise. Cf. Chavannes et Pelliot, op. cit. 1ère ptie, pp. 515, n. 2, and p. 516, n. 3.

[1168]. The Power whom Faustus (Aug. c. Faust. Bk XX. c. 2) calls “God the Son.”

[1169]. Evidently the incarnate or human messengers, Zoroaster, Buddha, Jesus, and Manes. The heavenly “legates” are never depicted as “preaching” to men.

[1170]. The Past, Present and Future, called the “Three Moments” in the Tun-huang treatise. See Chavannes et Pelliot, op. cit. 11me ptie, pp. 114, 116.

[1171]. Probably the strong or mighty Srôsh or Tertius Legatus.

[1172]. This may be compared to the Ophite Diagram in which Agape or Love is made the summit of the Pantheon. See [Chap. VIII] p. [68] supra. See also the same dogma in Valentinus, [Chap. IX] p. [123] supra.

[1173]. Flügel, op. cit. pp. 95, 96.

[1174]. As to these, see En Nadîm in Flügel, op. cit. pp. 97-100.

[1175]. Chavannes et Pelliot, op. cit. 1ère ptie, p. 543, n. 2.

[1176]. Augustine, de Moribus Manichaeorum, c. X. Cf. Baur, Das Manichäische Religionssystem, pp. 248 sqq. Chavannes et Pelliot, op. cit. 1ère ptie, p. 547, n. 1, examine the question whether these are borrowed from Buddhism as F. W. K. Müller and Cumont assert, and incline to the view that Manes took them from Zoroastrianism.

[1177]. The word vusanti does not seem to be explained by Prof. von Le Coq. Has it any connection with the Sanskrit vasanta “spring”? In that case, the 50 days fast may have been continuous like the Christian Lent and the Mahommedan Ramadan. But it seems more likely that it refers to the weekly fast on Sunday which, the Fihrist notwithstanding, seems to have been incumbent on all the Manichaeans, Elect and Hearers alike. So Chavannes et Pelliot, op. cit. 2me ptie, p. 111, n. 2. See n. 4, p. [349] infra.

[1178]. Prof. von Le Coq says (J.R.A.S. 1911, p. 307) that this word is as yet unexplained and may belong to another language than Turkish. One is almost tempted to see in it a corruption of the Yom Kippur or Day of Atonement of the Jews. Judaism is the last religion from which the Manichaeans would have consciously borrowed; but the Jews have always taken their goods where they found them, and it may well be that both Jews and Manichaeans were here drawing from a common source.

[1179]. Is this the Tertius Legatus or another?

[1180]. Augustine, c. Faust. Bk II. c. 5. Cf. Chavannes et Pelliot, op. cit. 1ère ptie, p. 539, and n. 1.

[1181]. Chavannes et Pelliot, op. cit. 1ère ptie, p. 573, n. 3.

[1182]. So Baur, op. cit. This was doubtless true in the West and in lands where they were exposed to severe persecution.

[1183]. This explains its translation from its original Pahlavi into the language of the converts and each copy bearing the name of the owner.

[1184]. See Cumont, Cosmog. Manich. p. 56, for authorities. Cf. also de Stoop, op. cit. p. 22. As has been many times said above, every religion and sect at the time accused the others of these filthy practices, without our being able to discern any proof of the justice of the accusation in one case more than in another. In any case, St Augustine, here the chief authority, could not have known of it at first hand, as he had never been more than a Hearer, and he himself says (contra Fortunatum, Bk I. App.) that while he had heard that the Elect celebrated the Eucharist, he knew nothing of the mode of celebration. Cf. Neander, Ch. Hist. II. p. 193.

[1185]. All contemporary authorities are agreed that they were forbidden to drink wine.

[1186]. Neander, op. cit. II. p. 170.

[1187]. Le Coq, Chotscho, Vol. I. Pl. I. and IV.

[1188]. Aug. c. Ep. Fundamenti, c. 8.

[1189]. Augustine, c. Faust. Bk XVIII. c. 5, whom he quotes, does not say however that they kept Sunday as a festival, but merely that they then worshipped the Sun: Vos in die, quem dicunt solis, solem colitis.

[1190]. Aug. c. Ep. Fundamenti, c. 8 and de Stoop, op. cit. p. 27.

[1191]. Al-Bîrûnî, Chronology, p. 27.

[1192]. Ib. pp. 121, 190.

[1193]. A few other undoubted extracts from the Shapurakhan are to be found in Müller, Handschriften-Reste, passim, and others quoted at second hand from Mahommedan writers in Kessler, op. cit., as to which see ib. pp. 180-191.

[1194]. Al-Bîrûnî, op. cit. p. 225.

[1195]. See Kessler, op. cit. p. 191 sqq.

[1196]. Aug. c. Faust. Bk XXXII. c. 7.

[1197]. See Albert Dufourcq, De Manichaeismo apud Latinos, Paris, 1900, where all these apocrypha are carefully examined. The Quo vadis story appears on p. 40.

[1198]. Chavannes et Pelliot, op. cit. p. 508, and n. 1.

[1199]. Hegemonius, Acta, c. XIII. p. 22, Beeson.

[1200]. Chavannes et Pelliot, op. cit. 1ère ptie, pp. 399, 400.

[1201]. Op. cit. 1ère ptie, pp. 509, n. 5, 510, n. 2, 533, nn. 2 and 4.

[1202]. Nowhere is this curious theory, which forms the base of most Mediaeval Cabala and magic, more clearly stated. Thus the Tun-huang treatise says in describing the fashioning of the body of man by the devils (as in the Μέρος τευχῶν Σωτῆρος), “there is not a single formation of the universe (or cosmos) which they did not imitate in the carnal body” (Chavannes et Pelliot, op. cit. 1ère ptie, p. 527); and in the next page “The demon ... shut up the five natures of Light in the carnal body of which he made a little universe (microcosm).”

[1203]. Chavannes et Pelliot, op. cit. 1ère ptie, p. 514.

[1204]. Op. cit. pp. 528, 529.

[1205]. Their Chinese names are discussed by MM. Chavannes and Pelliot (op. cit. 1ère ptie, pp. 521, n. 1, 542, n. 1, 543, nn. 1, 2, and 544, n. 1), wherein are gathered nearly all that can be said about them. The learned commentators decide that their functions still remain mysterious. But see next note infra.

[1206]. W. Radloff, Chuastuanift, das Bussgebet der Manichäer, St Petersburg, 1909, pt I. pp. 19, 20. Von Le Coq, J.R.A.S. 1911, p. 294: “when the Gods Kroshtag and Padwakhtag, the Appellant and Respondent, should have brought to us that part of the light of the Fivefold God that, going to God, is there to be purified.” One is inclined to compare this with Jeû and Melchizidek receiving and purifying the light won from this world, or with Gabriel and Michael in the Pistis Sophia bearing the heroine upward out of Chaos; but the parallel may be accidental and is easily pushed too far.

[1207]. Like the “Twin Saviours” of the Pistis Sophia, whose functions are never even alluded to in that document.

[1208]. See notes 2 and 3, p. [327] supra.

[1209]. M. de Stoop’s Essai sur la Diffusion du Manichéisme is most informing on this head. See also A. Dufourcq’s Thesis quoted in n. 2, p. [351] supra. A very brief summary of the history of the sect was given by the present writer in J.R.A.S. 1913, pp. 69-94.

[1210]. For the enquiry by Strategius, afterwards called Musonianus, and Prefect of the East under Constantius, see Ammianus Marcellinus, Bk XV. c. 13. Cf. Neander, Ch. Hist. IV. 488 sqq. That the persecution instituted against them by Diocletian slackened under Constantine and Constantius, see de Stoop, op. cit. pp. 40, 41.

[1211]. See the Laws of Theodosius and Valentinian II, quoted by de Stoop, op. cit. pp. 41, 42.

[1212]. Gibbon, Decline and Fall, III. p. 153. Justinian put to death not only convicted Manichaeans, but those who being acquainted with members of the sect, did not denounce them. See de Stoop, op. cit. p. 43.

[1213]. The Manichaeans seem always to have been favoured by the better classes and high officials of the Empire who maintained for some time a secret leaning towards Paganism. See de Stoop, op. cit. p. 84. The case of Barsymès, the banker or money-changer whom Theodora made Praetorian Prefect, and who was allowed according to Procopius (Anecdota, c. XXII. 7) to profess Manichaeism openly, was doubtless only one of many. It is apparently this Barsymès who is invoked in the Turfan texts as “the Lord Bar Simus,” see Müller, Handschriften-Reste, pp. 45, 59.

[1214]. That this was the professed policy of the sect seems plain from the words they attributed to Manes himself: “I am not inhuman like Christ who said: Whoso denieth me, him will I deny. I say unto you: Whoso denieth me before man and saves himself by this falsehood, him will I receive with joy, as if he had not denied me.” Cf. de Stoop, op. cit. p. 46, quoting Cedrenus; Al Bîrûnî, Chronology, p. 191.

[1215]. Von Le Coq, Exploration Archéologique à Tourfan, Confces au Musée Guimet (Bibl. de Vulg. t. XXXV.), 1910, p. 278.

[1216]. de Stoop, op. cit. pp. 86, 144.

[1217]. Neander, Ch. Hist. III. pp. 34, 35.

[1218]. Op. cit. III. p. 46.

[1219]. Sozomen, Hist. Eccl. Bk V. c. 5, for instances. Cf. Neander, op. cit. III. pp. 66, 67.

[1220]. Neander, op. cit. III. p. 96.

[1221]. Op. cit. III. p. 100.

[1222]. S. Dill, Roman Society in the Last Century of the Western Empire, pp. 143-166.

[1223]. Eusebius, Vita Constantini, Bk III. cc. 64, 65.

[1224]. Op. cit. c. 66.