[221]. Sanctam autem hebdomadam septem stellas, quas dicunt planetas, esse volunt. Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 28, § 5, p. 236, Harvey.
[222]. Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk V. c. 8, p. 159, Cruice, says that the “nothing” said in John i. 3, 4 to have been made without the Word is in fact this world. Τὸ δὲ “οὐδέν, ὃ χωρὶς αὐτοῦ γέγονεν, ὁ κόσμος ἰδικός ἐστιν · γέγονεν γὰρ χωρὶς αὐτοῦ ὑπὸ τρίτου καὶ τετάρτον.” “But the ‘nothing’ which came into being without Him is the world of form; for it came into being without Him by the Third and Fourth”—these last being evidently Sophia and Jaldabaoth respectively.
[223]. Οὐ δύναται οὖν, φησι, σωθῆναι ὁ τέλειος ἄνθρωπος, ἐὰν μὴ ἀναγεννηθῇ διὰ ταύτης εἰσελθὼν τῆς πύλης. “The perfect [or initiated] man, he says, therefore cannot be saved unless he be born again, entering in through this gate.” Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk V. c. 8, p. 165, Cruice.
[224]. Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk V. c. 7, p. 144, Cruice.
[225]. Clem. Alex. Strom. Bk III. c. 13, and n. 2, p. 196, Chapter VI, vol. I. The οὔτε ἄρρεν οὔτε θῆλυ of this passage and of Clement’s Second Epistle to the Romans (Hilgenfeld, N.T. extra canon. pt I., p. 79) is compared by the Naassene author (Hipp. op. cit. Bk V. c. 7, p. 146, Cruice) with the emasculation of Attis, which is made a type of the soul “passing from the material parts of the lower creation to the eternal substance above.”
[226]. The Naassenes had priests. Οἱ οὖν ἱερεῖς καὶ προστάται τοῦ δόγματος γεγένηνται πρῶτοι οἱ ἐπικληθέντες Ναασσηνοί. “The priests and chiefs of the doctrine have been the first who were called Naassenes.” Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk V. c. 6, p. 139, Cruice. Cf. also p. [77], infra.
[227]. As we have seen, Aelius Aristides says the devotees of the Alexandrian gods used to bury holy books in their tombs. See Chapter II, vol. I. p. [60], supra.
[228]. See Chapter IV, supra.
[229]. I have taken the earliest date for which there is any probability, because it was in Hadrian’s time that most of the great Gnostics taught, and their speculations would therefore have been most likely to come to heathen ears. Keim, Celsus Wahres Wort, Zürich, 1873, however, makes the date of the book 177-178 A.D., and this seems supported by the latest critics. See Patrick, Apology of Origen, 1892, p. 9, where the question is thoroughly examined.
[230]. Origen, cont. Cels. Bk VI. c. 24.