that is, he led them,
“Gracious Hermes led them adown the dark ways.”—
(Odyssey, XXIV, 9 ff.)
p. 156.that is, he says, into eternal countries remote from all evil. For whence, says he, did they come?
“By Ocean’s flood they came and the Leucadian cliff
And by the Sun’s gates and the land of dreams.”—
(Odyssey, ubi cit.)
This he says is Ocean, “source of gods and source of men”[72] ever ebbing and flowing now forth and now back. But when he says Ocean flows forth there is birth of men, but when back to the wall and stockade and the Leucadian rock there is birth of gods. This he says is that which is written: “I have said ye are all gods and sons of the Highest; if you hasten to flee from Egypt and win across the Red Sea into the desert,” that is from the mixture below to the Jerusalem above who is the Mother of (all) living. “But if ye return again to Egypt,” that is to the mixture below, p. 157. “ye shall die as men.”[73] For deathly, says he, is all birth below, but deathless that which is born above; for it is born of water alone and the spirit, spiritual not fleshly. This, he says, is that which is written: “That which is born of the flesh is flesh and that which is born of the spirit is spirit.”[74] This is, according to them, the spiritual birth. This, he says, is the great Jordan which flowing forth prevented the sons of Israel from coming out of the land of Egypt—or rather, from the mixture below; for Egypt is the body according to them—until Joshua[75] turned it and made it flow back towards its source.
8. Following up these and such-like (words) the most wonderful Gnostics having invented a new art of grammar[76] imagine that their own prophet Homer unspeakably[77] foreshowed[78] these things and they mock at those who not being initiated in the Holy Scriptures are led together into such designs. But they say: whoso says all things were framed from one, errs; but whoso says from three speaks the truth and gives an exposition of (the things of) the universe. For one, he says, is the blessed nature of the Blessed Man above, Adamas, and one is the mortal (nature), p. 158. below, and one is the kingless race begotten on high, where, he says, is Mariam the sought-for one, and Jothor the great wise one, and Sephora the seer,[79] and Moses whose generation was not in Egypt—for there were children born to him in Midian—and this, he says, was not forgotten by the poets:—