[240] Matt. vii. 11. Note the change of “Your” for “Our.”
[241] John viii. 44.
[242] Here again he dwells upon the supposed evil nature of the Demiurge.
[243] Or as Macmahon translates, “the substantial from the Unsubstantial one.”
[244] A lacuna in the text is thus filled by Cruice.
[245] Again this simile is not necessarily by the Peratic author, but seems to be introduced by Hippolytus. For the supposed conduct of naphtha in the presence of fire, see Plutarch, vit Alex.
[246] ἐξεικονισμένον. A different metaphor from the “type.” We shall meet with this one frequently in the work attributed to Simon Magus.
[247] The text has ἐκ καμαρίου. Here Schneidewin agrees that the proper reading is μακαρίου, there being no reason why any “life-giving substance” should exist in the brain-pan. He thus confirms the reading in n. on p. [152] supra.
[248] This chapter on the Peratæ is evidently drawn from more sources than one. The author’s first statement of their doctrines, which occupies pp. [146]-[149] supra, represents probably his first impression of them and contains at least one glaring contradiction, duly noted in its place. Then comes a long extract from Sextus Empiricus which is to all appearance a repetition of the earliest part of Book IV, only pardonable if it be allowed that the present Book was delivered in lecture form. There follows a quotation longer and more sustained than any other in the whole work from a Peratic book which he says was called Proastii, with a bombastic prelude much resembling the language of Simon Magus’ Great Announcement in Book VI, followed by a catalogue of starry “influences” which reads much as if it were taken from some astrological manual. There follows in its turn a dissertation on the Ophite Serpent showing how this object of their adoration, identified with the Brazen Serpent of Exodus, was made to prefigure or typify in the most incongruous manner many personages in the Old and New Testaments, including Christ Himself. After this he announces an “epitome” of the Peratic doctrine which turns out to be perfectly different from anything before said, divides the universe, which he has previously said the Peratics divided into unbegotten, self-begotten and begotten, into a new triad of Father, Son (i. e. Serpent), and Matter, and gives a fairly consistent statement of the Peratic scheme of salvation based on this hypothesis. One can only suppose here that this last is an afterthought added when revising the book and inspired by some fresh evidence of Peratic beliefs probably coloured by Stoic or Marcionite doctrine. In those parts of the chapter which appear to have been taken from genuinely Peratic sources, the reference to some Western Asiatic tradition concerning cosmogony and the protoplasts and differing considerably from the narrative of Genesis, is plainly apparent.
[249] This chapter is the most difficult of the whole book to account for, with the doubtful exception of the much later one on the Docetæ. A sect of Sethians is mentioned by Irenæus, who does not attempt to separate their doctrines from those of the Ophites. Pseudo-Tertullian in his tractate Against All Heresies also connects with the Ophites a sect called Sethites or Sethoites, the main dogma he attributes to them being an attempt to identify Christ with the Seth of Genesis. Epiphanius follows this last author in this identification and calls them Sethians, but does not expressly connect them with the Ophites, makes them an Egyptian sect, and does not attribute to them serpent-worship. The sectaries of this chapter are called in the rubric Sithiani, altered to Sēthiani in the Summary of Book X, and the name is not necessarily connected with that of the Patriarch. In the Bruce Papyrus, a Power, good but subordinate to the Supreme God, is mentioned, called “the Sitheus,” which may possibly, by analogy with the late-Egyptian Si-Osiris and Si-Ammon, be construed “Son of God.” Of their doctrines little can be made from Hippolytus’ brief but confused description. Their division of the cosmos into three parts does not seem to differ much from that of the Peratæ, although they make a sharper distinction than this last between the world of light and that of darkness, which has led Salmon (D.C.B. s.v., Ophites) to conjecture for them a Zoroastrian origin. This is unlikely, and more attention is due to Hippolytus’ own statement that they derived their doctrines from Musæus, Linus, and Orpheus. In Forerunners it is sought to show that the Orphic teaching was one of the foundations on which the fabric of Gnosticism was reared, and the image of the earth as a matrix was certainly familiar to the Greeks, who made Delphi its ὀμφαλός or navel. Hence the imagery of the text, offensive as it is to our ideas, would not have been so to them, and Epiphanius (Hær., XXXVIII, p. 510, Oehl.) knew of several writings, κατὰ τῆς Ὑστέρας, or the Womb, which he says the sister sect of Cainites called the maker of heaven and earth. In this case, we need not take the story in the text about the generation by the bad or good serpent as necessarily referring to the Incarnation. One of the scenes in the Mysteries of Attis-Sabazius, and perhaps of those of Eleusis also, seems to have shown the seduction by Zeus in serpent-form of his virgin daughter Persephone and the birth therefrom of the Saviour Dionysos who was but his father re-born. This story of the fecundation of the earth-goddess by a higher power in serpent shape seems to have been present in all the religions of Western Asia, and was therefore extremely likely to be caught hold of by an early form of Gnosticism. In no other respect does this so-called “Sethian” heresy seem to have anything in common with Christianity, and it may therefore represent a pre-Christian form of Ophitism. The serpent in it is, perhaps, neither bad nor good.