[150]. Thus after saying that “he who says all things are composed (συνεστάναι) from one (substance) errs, but that he who says they are framed from three speaks the truth,” he goes on to say Mία γάρ ἐστι φησιν, ἡ μακαρία φύσις τοῦ μακαρίou ἄνθρωπου τοῦ ἄνω, τοῦ Ἀδάμαντος· μία δὲ ἡ θνητὴ κάτω· μία δὲ ἡ ἀβασίλευτος γενεὰ ἡ ἄνω γενομένη, κ.τ.λ., “For one is the blessed nature of the blessed Man above, viz.: Adamas, and one is the nature below which is subject to death, and one is the kingless race which is begotten above,” etc. Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk V. c. 8, p. 157, Cruice.
[151]. Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk V. c. 1, p. 140, Cruice.
[152]. ὰποκατάστασις (see p. [57] infra). As Salmon has shown with great clearness, this, rather than the redemption of individual souls, is the aim of all post-Christian Gnostic systems, Dict. Christian Biog. s.v. Gnosticism.
[153]. Philo, de Sacrificantibus, c. 13; II. p. 261, Mangey.
[154]. Acts xiv. 11-18.
[155]. Postea, dicunt, exultante primo homine cum filio suo super formositate Spiritus, hoc est foeminae, et illuminante eam, generavit ex ea lumen incorruptibile, tertium masculum, quem Christum vocant. So the Latin version of Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 28, p. 227, Harvey. The Greek text, which should contain Irenaeus’ own words, only says: Ἐρασθῆναι δέ φασι τὸν πρῶτον Ἄνθρωπον, καὶ τὸν δεύτερον, τῆς ὥpas τoῦ Πveύμaτoς ... καὶ παιδοποιῆσαι φῶς ... ὁ καλοῦσι Χριστόν. Something, however, has evidently been expunged from the earlier version of the story, and it is possible that the later interpolation is due to the desire of the translator to make the teaching of the heretics as repulsive as possible. Theodoret merely copies the Latin text of Irenaeus.
[156]. εἰς τὸν ἄφθαρτον ἀνασπασθῆναι Αἰῶνα, ἣν καὶ ἀληθινὴν ἐκκλησίαν καλοῦσι. Irenaeus, loc. cit. p. 228, Harvey.
[157]. This Divine Family or Council must have been an old idea in post-exilic Judaism. Justin Martyr, Dial. c. Tryph. c. 126, says that Christ is called the “Angel of the Great Council” by Ezekiel, but the expression is not to be found in the A.V. Origen, cont. Cels. Bk V. c. 53, also speaks of a prophecy in which Jesus was described as the “Angel of the Great Council, because he announced to men the great counsel of God”—a pun which curiously enough is the same in Greek as in English. The Jews of Elephantine worshipped in their temple a god and a goddess who were looked upon as the assessors, if the inferiors, of Yahweh (see n. 4, p. [32], supra). In the Talmud, it is said that God has an upper or celestial familia or tribunal without consulting which he does nothing, and which is indicated by the “holy ones” of Dan. iv. 17. See Taylor, Pirke-Aboth, Cambridge, 1877, II. p. 43, n. 7. The expression “Angel of the Great Council” recurs in the Gnostic epitaph from the Via Latina given later (Chapter IX).
[158]. Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 28, pp. 227, 228, Harvey.
[159]. Giraud, op. cit. p. 95, thinks that in the Naassene teaching matter does not really exist, all things being contained in Adamas. The absolute antagonism of God and matter is, however, too strongly marked a feature of nearly all the sources from which the Ophites can have drawn their doctrine for his theory to be entertained. Berger, Études des Documents nouveaux fournis sur les Ophites par les Philosophumena, Nancy, 1873, p. 25, puts forward the same idea as a mere figure of speech and in order apparently to reconcile the Ophite doctrine with St John’s statement that without the Word “nothing” was made. Later he (ibid. pp. 61, 104, 105) points out that the tendency of the Ophite like all other Gnostic doctrine is to widen rather than to narrow the abyss between Spirit and Matter.