Again the Moon traversing the heavens completely in 30 days, typifies (they say) by these days the number of the Aeons. And the Sun completing his journey and terminating his cyclical return to his former place in 12 months shows forth the Dodecad. And that the days themselves, since they are measured by 12 hours, are a type of the mighty[285] Ogdoad. And also that the perimeter of the Zodiacal circle has 360 degrees and that each Zodiacal sign has 30. Thus by means of the circle, they say, the p. 331. image of the connection of the 12 with the 30 is observed. And again also they imagine that the earth is divided into 12 climates, and that each several climate receives a single power from the heavens immediately above it[286] and produces children of the same essence with the power sending down [this influence] by emanation [which is they say] a type of the Dodecad on high.
55. And besides this, they say that the Demiurge of the Ogdoad on high,[287] wishing to imitate the Boundless and Everlasting and Unconfined and Timeless One and not being able to form a model of His stability and permanence, because he was himself the fruit of the Hysterema, was forced to place in it for rendering it eternal, times and seasons and numbers, thinking that by the multitude of times he was imitating the Boundless One. But they declare that in this the truth having escaped him, he followed the false; and that therefore when the times are fulfilled, his work will be dissolved.[288]
p. 332. 56. These things, then, those who are from the school of Valentinus declare concerning Creation and the Universe, every time producing something newer[289] (than the last). And they consider this to be fructification, if any one similarly discovering something greater appears to work wonders. And finding in each case from the Scriptures something accordant with the aforesaid numbers, they prate of Moses and the Prophets, imagining them to declare allegorically the dimensions of the Aeons. Which things it does not seem to me expedient to explain as they are senseless and inconsistent, and already the blessed elder Irenæus has marvellously and painfully refuted their doctrines. From whom also [we have taken] their so-called discoveries and have shown that they, having appropriated these things from (the) trifling[290] of the Pythagorean philosophy and the astrologies, accuse Christ of having handed them down. But since I consider that their senseless doctrines have been sufficiently set forth, and that it has been already proved whose disciples Marcus and Colarbasus[291] by becoming the successors of the school of Valentinus (really) are, let us see also what Basilides says.[292]
FOOTNOTES
[1] He of course refers to the Ophites, whence it is clear that he included Justinus among them. His language may imply that all these serpent-worshipping sects had been in existence some time before, but did not begin to write their doctrines until they had taken on a veneer of Christianity. This is very probable, but there is not as yet any convincing proof that this was the case.
[2] Here again it is very difficult to say whether τῶν ἀκολούθων means those who follow in point of time or in the pages of the book.
[3] ὄργια, “secret rites” and ὀργή, “wrath,” is the pun here.
[4] Simon Magus, the convert of Philip the Evangelist, is said by all patristic writers to be at once the first teacher and the founder of all (post-Christian) Gnosticism; but until the discovery of our text our knowledge of his doctrines hardly went further than the statements of St. Irenæus and Epiphanius that he claimed to be the Supreme Being. The only other light on the subject came from Theodoret, who, writing in the fifth century, discloses in a few brief words the assertion by Simon of a system of aeons or inferior powers emanating from the Divinity by pairs. It is plain that in this, Theodoret must have either borrowed from, or used the same material as, our author, and it is now seen that Simon’s aeons were said by him to be six in number, the sources of all subsequent being, and to be considered under a double aspect. On the one hand, they were names or attributes of God like the Amshaspands of Zoroastrianism or the Sephiroth of the Jewish Cabala; and on the other they were identified with natural objects such as Heaven and Earth, Sun and Moon, Earth and Water, thereby forming a link with the Orphic and other cosmogonies current in Greece and the East. We now learn, too, for the first time that Simon taught, like the Ophites, that the Supreme Being was of both sexes like his antitypes, that the universe consisted of three worlds reflecting one another, and that man must achieve his salvation by coming to resemble the Deity—a result which was apparently to be brought about by finding his twin soul and uniting himself to her. None of these ideas seem to have been Simon’s own invention, and all are found among those of earlier or later Gnostics. Hence their appearance has here given rise to the theories, put forward in the first instance by German writers, but also adopted by some English ones, that the Simon of our text was not the magician of the Acts but an heresiarch of the same name who flourished in the second century, and that the opponent of St. Peter covers under the same name the personality of St. Paul. Neither theory seems to have any foundation.
[5] τοῦ Γιττηνοῦ. Hippolytus’ usual practice is to use the place-name as an adjective. The Codex has Γειττηνοῦ, Justin Martyr, “of Gitto.”
[6] Probably Paramedes or Agamedes is intended. Cf. Theocritus, Idyll, II, 14. The Paramedes or Perimedes there mentioned was said to have been a famous witch, child of the Sun, and mistress of Poseidôn.