[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.