[165] Of the sources from which the author of the Philosophumena drew this account of Valentinus’ doctrine, much has been written. Hilgenfeld in his Ketzergeschichte des Urchristenthums, and Lipsius in the article “Valentinus” in Smith & Wace’s D.C.B., agree that its main source is the writings of Heracleon. Cruice, Études sur les Philosophumena, on the other hand, thinks it largely composed of extracts from a work of Valentinus himself, entitled Sophia. Salmon (Hermathena, 1885, p. 391), while not committing himself to a definite pronouncement as to the writer quoted, says that Hippolytus undoubtedly quoted from a genuine Valentinian treatise, and that this last is above the suspicion of forgery with which he is inclined to view other quotations in the Philosophumena.
[166] The notice of the followers, real or supposed, of Valentinus which occupies the remainder of Book VI adds little to our previous knowledge of their doctrines, being taken almost verbatim from the work of Hippolytus’ teacher, St. Irenæus. It is noteworthy, however, that although the Table of Contents promises us an account of (among others) Heracleon, nothing is here said of him, although that shrewd critic of the Gospels was thought worthy of refutation by Origen some fifty years later. Yet Hippolytus mentions Heracleon as being with Ptolemy a leader of the Italic School of Valentinians which seems to dispose of the theory advanced by Lipsius (Smith & Wace’s D.C.B., s. v. “Valentinus”) that Heracleon was the author from whom Hippolytus took his account of Valentinus’ own doctrine. Of Secundus nothing more is known than is set down in the text, while the “Epiphanes” here mentioned is thought by some to be not a name, but an adjective, so that the passage would read “a certain illustrious teacher of theirs.” This was certainly the reading of Irenæus’ Latin translator, who renders the word by “clarus.” Is this a roundabout way of describing Heracleon? As to this see Salmon in D.C.B., s. v. “Heracleon.”
[167] ἀποστᾶσαν καὶ ὑστερήσασαν. Evidently Sophia is meant.
[168] ἀρχή.
[169] Μονότης.
[170] Ἑνότης.
[171] προήκαντο μὴ προέμεναι, protulerunt non proferendo ex se, Cr. So Irenæus, I, xi. 3, p. 104, H. In his note Harvey says that the passage implies that Henotes and Monotes “put forth as the original cause the Beginning, but so as that the Beginning was eternally inseparable from their unity.”
[172] Irenæus makes ὁ λόγος, “the Word,” the speaker. So Tertullian, adv. Val., “quod sermo vocat.” But it seems more natural to refer the speech to Epiphanes or “the Illustrious Teacher.”
[173] Προαρχή, Ἀνεννόητος, Ἄρῥητος and Ἀόρατος. The three first names, however, are not in the text but are restored from Irenæus, I, v. 2, p. 105, H.
[174] These four new names are: Ἀρχή, Ἀκατάληπτος, Ἀνωνόμαστος and Ἀγέννητος.