[170]. See the picture by Faucher Gudin of the universe according to the Babylonians in Maspero, Hist. Ancienne des Peuples de l’ Orient Classique, Paris, 1895, t. I. p. 543.
[171]. Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 28, pp. 231, 232, Harvey. A sort of echo or perhaps a more detailed repetition of the story is found in one of the latest documents of the Pistis Sophia, where Jesus tells His disciples that the ἀρχοντες or rulers of Adamas once rebelled and persisted in begetting “archons and archangels and angels and serving spirits and decans”; that the 12 aeons, who are evidently the Signs of the Zodiac, divided into two companies of six, half of them under the rule of one Jabraôth repenting and being translated into a higher sphere, while the others were “bound” in our firmament under the rule of the five planets. Perhaps the origin of the whole story is the battle of the Gods and the serpent-footed giants, which appears on the Mithraic bas-reliefs, for which see P.S.B.A. 1912, p. 134, and Pl. XVI, 7. It is certainly of Asiatic or Anatolian origin, and seems to be connected with volcanic phenomena. Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk V. c. 13, p. 192, Cruice, says this rebellion is a “Chaldaean” doctrine.
[172]. τὸν δὲ ἀθυμήσαντα, εἰς τὴν τρύγα τῆς ὕλης ἐρεῖσθαι τὴν ἔννοιαν, καὶ γεννῆσαι υἱὸν ὀφιόμορφον ἐξ αὐτῆς, “and [they say that] he being enraged, beheld his thought in the dregs of matter, and a serpent-formed son was born from it,” Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 28, p. 232, Harvey. Perhaps this explains how the Ennoia or Thought of God was supposed to take definite shape. Other editors wish to read ἐρείδεσθαι “fixed” for ἐρεῖσθαι.
[173]. Hippolytus, Bk V. c. 9, p. 178, Cruice.
[174]. See n. 1, p. [45], supra. So Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk V. c. 9, p. 178, Cruice, when speaking of the Ophites frequenting the mysteries of the Magna Mater, says that there is no temple anywhere [he means in Phrygia] without a serpent. See Ramsay, Cities, etc., I. pp. 51, 87. As King, Gnostics and their Remains, p. 225, noted, all the principal cities of Asia Minor, Ephesus, Apamea and Pergamum depicted serpents on their coins. For the story of Alexander’s birth, see Budge, Alexander the Great (Pseudo-Callisthenes), p. 8.
[175]. See Ramsay in last note.
[176]. Acta Philippi (ed. Tischendorf), passim.
[177]. dehinc et Spiritum, et animam et omnia mundialia; inde generatum omnem oblivionem, et malitiam, et zelum, et invidiam, et mortem. Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 28, p. 232, Harvey. So Dionysos, whose emblem (Clem. Alex. Protrept. c. II.) was the serpent, is identified with the soul of the world. Cf. Berger, Études sur la Philosophumena, Nancy, 1873, pp. 39 sqq.
[178]. Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk V. c. 9, p. 178, Cruice.
[179]. Ibid. Bk V. c. 7, pp. 144, 145, Cruice.