X. THE SYSTEM OF THE PISTIS SOPHIA AND ITS RELATED TEXTS[459]…

X. THE SYSTEM OF THE PISTIS SOPHIA AND ITS RELATED TEXTS[459]

In 1765, the British Museum purchased from the celebrated antiquarian, Dr Askew, a parchment MS. written in Coptic[460]. On palaeographic grounds it is said to be not earlier than the VIth century A.D., which agrees fairly with its state of preservation and the fact that it is written on both sides of the skins so as to present the appearance of a modern book[461]. Woide, then librarian of the Museum and pastor of the King’s German Chapel at St James’, published some extracts from it in his Appendix to the Codex Alexandrinus in 1799, and Dulaurier gave others in the Journal Asiatique in 1847[462]. It remained, however, untranslated until 1850, when Maurice Schwartze, a young German scholar who was sent over here to study our MSS. at the expense of the king of Prussia, turned it into Latin; and he having died soon after, his translation was published the following year by the learned Petermann. The British Museum text is written throughout in the Sahidic dialect; and is the work of more than one scribe; but it seems to be agreed by those who have studied it with knowledge that the documents it contains are neither continuous nor necessarily related; and that it is in fact a series of extracts from earlier MSS.[463] Of these documents, the second commences with a heading, in a handwriting other than that of the scribe of this part, reading “the Second Book of Pistis Sophia”; but as such a heading implies that the foregoing document was the First Book of Pistis Sophia, the whole MS. is generally known by that name[464].

The story presented in these two documents, although uncompleted, is, so far as it goes, perfectly consistent, and presupposes belief in a Gnostic system resembling at once those of the Ophites and of Valentinus. An introduction in narrative form informs us that Jesus, after rising from the dead, spent eleven years in teaching His disciples the arrangement of the heavenly places “only so far as the places” of a power whom He calls “the First Mystery,” and declares to be “before all mysteries,” and to be “within the veil,” being “the father of the likeness of a dove[465].” The result of this limitation was, we are told, that the disciples were ignorant not only that any power existed higher than the First Mystery, but also of the origin of the “places” or worlds of those material and quasi-material powers who, here as in the earlier systems, are responsible for the governance of the world and the fate of mankind. While the disciples are sitting with Jesus on the Mount of Olives, however, He is carried away from them into Heaven by a great “power” or shape of light which descends upon Him. On His return, He tells them that this shape was “a vesture of light” or His heavenly nature which He had laid aside before being born into this world[466]. He also informs them that, when He first came into this world before His Incarnation, He brought with Him twelve powers which He took from “the Twelve Saviours of the Treasure house of Light[467],” and planted them in the mothers of the twelve Apostles, so that when these last were born into the world they were given these powers instead of receiving, like other men, souls “from the archons (or rulers) of the aeons[468].” He also describes how He appeared among the archons of the Sphere in the likeness of the angel Gabriel, and found among them the soul of “Elijah the Prophet[469].” This He caused to be taken to “the Virgin of Light,” that it might be planted in Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist[470], and He adds that He bound to it a power which He took from “the Little Iao the Good, who is in the middle.” The object of this was, we are told, that John the Baptist might prepare the way of Jesus and baptize with water for the remission of sins.

Jesus then proceeds to describe His own Incarnation. When speaking, still in the shape of the angel Gabriel, with Mary His “mother after the body of matter,” He planted in her the first power he had received from “Barbelo,” which was the body He had worn “in the height[471]”; and, in the place of the soul, a power which He received from “the Great Sabaoth the Good, who is in the place of the right.” After this digression, He resumes His account of what happened after His receiving the vesture of light on the Mount of Olives, and declares that He found written in this vesture five mysterious words “belonging [viz. in the language of] to the height[472],” which He interprets to His disciples thus:

“The mystery who is without the world, through whom all things exist, he is the giving forth and the lifting up of all and he has put forth all the emanations and the things which are in them all. And it is through him that all the mysteries exist and all their places. Come unto us, for we are thy fellows and thy members[473]! We are one with thee, for thou and we are one. This is the First Mystery which existed since the beginning in the Ineffable One before he [i.e. the First Mystery] went forth, and we all are his name[474].

“Now therefore we all await thee at the last boundary which is the last mystery from within[475]. This also is part of us. Now therefore we have sent to thee thy vesture which is thine from the beginning, which thou didst place in the last boundary, which is the last boundary from within, until the time should be fulfilled according to the commandment of the First Mystery. And now that the time is fulfilled, clothe thyself in it! Come unto us, for we all stand near to thee that we may clothe thee with all the glory of the First Mystery by His command. Which glory is as two vestures, besides that which we have sent unto thee. For thou art worthy of them since thou art preferred before us and wast made before us. Wherefore the First Mystery has sent thee by us the mystery of all his glory, which is as two vestures. In the first is the glory of all the names of all the mysteries and of all the emanations which are in the ranks of the receptacles of the Ineffable One. And in the second vesture is the glory of the names of all the mysteries and of all the emanations which are in the ranks of the two receptacles of the First Mystery. And in this vesture which we have sent thee now, is the glory of the name of the Recorder who is the First Precept[476], and the mystery of the Five Marks[477], and the mystery of the great Legate of the Ineffable One who is the same as that Great Light[478], and the mystery of the Five Prohegumeni who are the same as the Five Parastatae[479]. And there is also in that vesture the glory of the name of the mystery of all the ranks of the emanations of the Treasure-house of Light, and of their Saviours, and the ranks of those ranks which are the Seven Amen and which are the Seven Sounds, and also the Five Trees[480] and also the Three Amen, and also the Saviour of the Twins who is the boy of a boy[481], and the mystery of the Nine Guards of the Three Gates of the Treasure-house of Light. And there is also within it the glory of the name which is on the right, and of all those who are in the middle. And there also is the glory of the name of the Great Unseen One, who is the Great Forefather[482], and the mysteries of the Three Triple Powers, and the mystery of all their places, and the mystery of all their unseen ones, and of all the dwellers in the Thirteenth Aeon, and the name of the Twelve Aeons with all their Archons, all their Archangels, all their Angels and all the dwellers in the Twelve Aeons, and all the mystery of the name of all the dwellers in Heimarmene[483], and all the heavens, and the whole mystery of the name of all the dwellers in the Sphere and their firmaments with all they contain and their places. Lo, then, we have sent unto thee this vesture, which none knoweth from the First Precept downward, because that the glory of its light was hidden within it, and the Spheres and all the places from the First Precept downward knew it not. Hasten, then, do on the vesture, and come unto us, for we have remained near thee to clothe thee with these two vestures by the command of the First Mystery until the time fixed by the Ineffable One should be fulfilled. Now, then, the time is fulfilled. Come unto us quickly, that we may clothe thee with them until thou hast accomplished the entire ministry of the completion of the First Mystery, the ministry which has been laid upon thee by the Ineffable One. Come then unto us quickly in order that we may clothe thee with them according to the command of the First Mystery. For yet a little while, a very little while, and thou wilt cease to be in the world. Come then quickly, that thou mayest receive all the glory which is the glory of the First Mystery.”

This long address, in which the whole arrangement of the universe as the author supposes it to exist is set forth, is clearly the utterance of the heavenly powers belonging to the higher worlds whom Jesus has left on His descent to earth. Unintelligible as it seems at first sight, it can be explained to some extent by the tenets of the Ophites described in Chapter VIII, which formed, as we have seen, the basis on which Valentinus also constructed his system. The Ineffable One may be assumed to be the Bythos whom both the Ophites and Valentinus called by that epithet[484] and held to be the first and final source of all being. Although something is said here and elsewhere in the book of his “receptacles” and “places[485],” no particulars of them are given, they being apparently reserved for a future revelation[486]. The First Mystery, however, is spoken of later as a “Twin Mystery, looking inward and outward[487],” which seems to correspond to the Father-and-Son of the Ophite diagram. Later in the book, Jesus reveals to His disciples that He Himself is the First Mystery “looking outward[488],” and this seems to show that the author’s conception of the relations between Him and the First Person of the Trinity did not differ much from that of the Catholic Church[489]. The world of this First Mystery extends downwards as far as what is here, as in the Epistle to the Hebrews[490], called “the veil,” which is perhaps the veil of sense separating all things contaminated by mixture with matter from the Divine. This First Mystery is said to consist of twenty-four “mysteries”; but these do not seem to be, as in the older systems, places or worlds, but rather attributes or aspects of the Deity which together go to make up His whole being, as a number of letters are required to make up a word or name[491]. But from some words of Jesus given later in the book, it would appear that its author did not at all discard the view of the earlier Ophites that the Supreme Being was to be figured as of human form, for we find him remarking that the First Mystery himself proceeded from the “last limb” or member of the Ineffable One[492]. For the rest, it need only be pointed out here that the powers who address Jesus in the quotation just given also speak of themselves as His “members”; but that notwithstanding this, they must be looked upon as purely spiritual entities having no direct connection with any material forms except as paradigms or patterns[493]. Whatever the worlds which they inhabit may be thought to be like—and Jesus more than once tells His disciples that there is nothing on earth to which they can be compared—we can only say that they are two in number, and that it is the two “vestures of light” sent to Jesus on the Mount of Olives, or, in other words, His two natures, which give Him the means of ascending to the heavens of the Ineffable One and of the First Mystery respectively. If the author ever intended to discuss them further, he has certainly not done so in the Pistis Sophia properly so called[494].

On the other hand, the worlds and powers existing “below the veil,” or within the comprehension of the senses, and symbolized by the third and inferior “vesture” sent to Jesus, are indicated even in the address given above with fair particularity. Their names and relative positions are not easy to identify; but, thanks to some hints given in other parts of the book, the universe below “the veil” may be reconstructed thus[495]:—Its upper part contains the Treasure-house of light where, as its name implies, the light as it is redeemed from matter is stored up. There are below it five other worlds called the Parastatae or Helpers, in one of which Jesus is to reign during the millennium, and the ruler of the last of which arranges the pure spirits who dwell below it[496]. The highest spirit in the Treasure-house is called the First Precept or the Recorder, and with him is associated the Great Light, who is said to be the “legate” of the Ineffable One[497]. In the Treasure-house there are also the orders of spirits set out in the address just quoted, the only two to which it is necessary to refer here being the Five Trees[498] and the Twelve Saviours. From the Five Trees emanated the great “Powers of the Right Hand” to be next mentioned; while, as is before described, the Twelve Saviours furnished the spotless souls required for the Twelve Apostles[499]. The lower part of the same universe is called the Kerasmos or Confusion, because here the light, which in the upper part is pure, is mingled with matter. It is divided in the first instance into three parts, the Right-hand, the Middle, and the Left-hand[500]. Of these, the Right-hand contains the spirits who emanated from the Five Trees of the Treasure-house. At their head is Jeû, who has supreme authority over all the Confusion[501]. He is called the Overseer of the Light, and in his name we may possibly recognize a corruption of the Hebrew Yahweh. With him and of similar origin is Melchisedek,[502] the Inheritor, Receiver or Purifier of the Light, whose office it is to take the portions of light as they are redeemed into the Treasure-house[503]. Another emanation from the Five Trees is an otherwise unnamed Guard of the Veil of the Treasure-house[504] which seems to be the veil dividing the Treasure-house from the Place of the Right-hand, and there are two others of equal rank who are called simply the two Prohegumeni or Forerunners[505]. Below these again is the Great Sabaoth the Good, who supplied, as we have seen, the soul which was in Jesus at His birth, and who is himself the emanation, not of any of the Five Trees, but of Jeû[506]. He seems to have a substitute or messenger called the little Sabaoth the Good, who communicates directly with the powers of matter. In the Middle come the powers who are set over the reincarnation of souls and the consequent redemption of mankind. Of these, the only two named are “the Great Iao the Good[507],” spoken of in one passage as the Great Hegumen (or Leader) of the Middle[508]. He, too, has a minister called “the Little Iao” who supplies the “power” which, with the soul of Elijah, animated the body of John the Baptist[509]. He also has twelve deacons or ministers under him[510]. The other great Leader of the Middle is the Virgin of Light[511]. She it is who chooses the bodies into which the souls of men shall be put at conception, in discharge of which duty she sends the soul of Elijah into the body of John the Baptist, her colleague Iao’s share in the work being apparently limited to providing the “power” accompanying it. She has among her assistants seven other virgins of light[512], after whose likeness Mary the Mother of Jesus and Mary Magdalene are said to have been made, and we also read of “receivers” who are under her orders[513]. The light of the Sun “in its true shape” is said to be in her place[514], and there is some reason for thinking that she is to be considered as the power which directs the material Sun, while her colleague Iao has the same office as regards the Moon[515].

We now come to the places of the left, the highest of which seems to be that which is called the Thirteenth Aeon. This is a part of the universe the existence of which Jesus conceals from His disciples until He receives his “vestures,” and there is much mystery as to its origin. It seems to have been governed in the first instance by a triad consisting of an unnamed power referred to as the Great Forefather or the Great Unseen One, a female power called Barbelo[516], and a second male called the Authades or Proud God[517] who plays a principal part in the episode of Pistis Sophia which forms the ostensible theme of the book. Of the Great Forefather, we are told nothing of importance, but what is said of the female power Barbelo bears out fully the remark which Hippolytus attributes to Valentinus that among the lesser powers or aeons the female merely projects the substance, while it is the male which gives form to it[518]. It is doubtless for this reason that it is from her that the body of Jesus is said to have come—i.e. that she provided the matter out of which it was formed in the first instance, and which had, as He says later in the present book, to be purged and cleansed by Himself[519]. She is also spoken of throughout as the origin of all the matter within the world of sense[520]. This triad, constantly referred to throughout the book as the Three Tridynami or Triple Powers, have put forth, before the story opens, twenty-four other powers arranged in twelve syzygies or pairs who are spoken of as the Twenty-four Unseen Ones, and who inhabit with them the Thirteenth Aeon. Only one of these is named and this is the inferior or female member of the last syzygy. She is named Pistis Sophia, and gives, as we have seen, her name to the book[521].

We now pass from the unseen world, which can nevertheless be comprehended as being in part at least material, to the starry world above us which is plainly within the reach of our organs of sense. The controlling part in this is taken by the powers called the Twelve Aeons, who are ruled before the advent of Jesus by a power called, like the Supreme Being in the Ophite system, Adamas[522]. As they are called in one passage the 12 hours of the day, it may be concluded that they are the 12 zodiacal signs or, in other words, the Zodiac or 12 constellations of fixed stars through which the sun appears to pass in his yearly course[523]. Although nowhere expressly stated, it may be concluded that they emanated from the last member of the triad of the Left, i.e. the Authades, who is here said to have been disobedient in refusing “to give up the purity of his light,” no doubt when the earth was made, and is accused of ambition in wishing to rule the Thirteenth Aeon. Through his creature, Adamas their king, he induces the rulers of the Twelve Aeons to delay the redemption of the light from matter. It is from their matter that are made the souls, not only of men, but of beasts, birds, and reptiles[524], and if they were allowed to do as they pleased, the process would go on for ever, as it is the habit of these Archons “to turn about and devour their own ejecta, the breath of their mouths, the tears of their eyes, and the sweat of their bodies,” so that the same matter is used over and over again[525]. Below the starry world comes the Sphere of Heimarmene or Destiny, so called apparently because both the earthly and heavenly lot of each soul is determined on its downward passage through it, and below that again the Sphere simply so called, which is the visible firmament apparently stretched above us. The Archons of the Aeons, of whom Adamas is the chief, rule their own and both these lower spheres, and the only hindrance to their dilatory manoeuvres prior to the advent of Jesus was caused by Melchizidek the Receiver of the Light[526], who came among them at stated times, took away their light, and, after having purified it, stored it up in the Treasure-house. This was apparently done through the medium of the sun and moon, who seem to have acted in the matter as the “receivers” of Melchizidek[527].

We can now resume the narrative of the book which has been interrupted in order that a description of the universe through which Jesus passes on His ascension might be given. He tells His disciples that clothing Himself in His third or least glorious “vesture,” He flew up to the firmament, the gates of which opened spontaneously to give Him passage[528]. Entering in, the Archons there were all struck with terror at the light of His vesture, and wondered how the “Lord of the Universe[529]” passed through them unnoticed on his descent to earth[530]. The same scenes are repeated when He enters the Sphere of Destiny, and again when He reaches the Twelve Aeons or Zodiac of fixed stars. Before leaving the Twelve Aeons, Jesus takes away from its rulers a third part of their power, and alters their course, so that its direction is changed every six months. This He does, as He tells His disciples, for a double reason. He thereby prevents the Aeons from devouring their own matter, and so delaying the redemption of the light, and He further hinders their movements from being used by mankind in the divination and magic which the sinning angels taught when “they came down”—a clear reference to the story in Genesis of the fall of the angels as amplified in the Book of Enoch. This alteration, He declares, was foreshadowed by the text “I have shortened the times for my elect’s sake[531].”

Passing upward to the Thirteenth Aeon, Jesus tells His disciples that he found Pistis Sophia dwelling alone in a place immediately below it, and He here makes a long digression to recount her history. She is, as has been said above, one of the twenty-four invisible but material emanations projected by the Great Unseen Forefather and his consort Barbelo, and formerly dwelt with her own partner, whose name is not mentioned, in the Thirteenth Aeon[532]. But one day happening to look forth from her place and beholding the light of the Treasure-house, she longed to ascend towards it and began to sing praises to it. This angered exceedingly the Authades or Proud God, the Third Triple Power or chief of the Thirteenth Aeon, who had already, as has been said, shown his disobedience in refusing to give up his light. Out of envy and jealousy of Pistis Sophia, he sends forth from himself a great power with a lion’s face who is “half flame and half darkness” and bears the name of Jaldabaoth, which we have met with before among the Ophites[533]. This Jaldabaoth is sent below into the regions of Chaos, the unformed and shapeless darkness which is either below or surrounds the earth[534], and when Pistis Sophia sees him shining there, she mistakes his light for the light of the Treasure-house, and, leaving her consort, plunges downwards towards it. She is instantly seized by Jaldabaoth and other wicked powers sent forth by the Proud God, and grievously tormented with the object of taking from her her light, so that she may never again be able to return to her own place. In this plight, she sings several Metanoiae or hymns of penitence to the light, and after seven of these, Jesus, as He says, “from pity and without commandment,” raises her to the uppermost parts of Chaos where she is slightly more at ease[535]. She continues here to sing hymns of penitence, but is tormented afresh until, after her ninth repentance, Jesus receives command from the First Mystery to succour her. This he does in a battle with fresh emanations from the Authades, including one in the shape of “a flying arrow[536].” Adamas, the king of the wicked Eons, also sends a power to the assistance of Jaldabaoth, and the other emanations of the Proud God turn into serpents, a basilisk with seven heads, and a dragon[537]. The powers of light sent by Jesus, however, defeat all her enemies, and the archangels Gabriel and Michael bear her aloft and establish her in the place below the Thirteenth Aeon, where Jesus finds her on His ascension as here recorded. But this is not the end. Jesus tells her that when “three times” are fulfilled[538], she will be tormented again. This happens as predicted immediately before the descent of the “vesture” on Him on the Mount of Olives. Thereupon, He delivers her for the last time and restores her to her place in the 13th Aeon, where she sings to him a final hymn of thanksgiving.

This completes the episode of Pistis Sophia, and the rest of the book is filled with the questionings upon it of Mary Magdalene and the other disciples, among whom are prominent Mary the Mother of Jesus, Salome, Martha, St John the Divine, St Philip, St Thomas, and St Matthew, to which last-named three is said to be entrusted the recording of the words of Jesus, together with St Peter, St James and St Andrew. This has led some commentators to think that the work may possibly be the Interrogations of Mary (Ἐρωτήσεις Μαρίας), concerning which Epiphanius says that two versions, a greater and a lesser, were used by several Gnostic sects[539]. These questionings and the answers of Jesus are extremely tedious, and include the comparison of the hymns of Pistis Sophia, fourteen in all, with certain named Psalms and Odes of David and Solomon of which they are said to be the “interpretation[540].” In the course of this, however, the purpose of the book is disclosed, and appears as the revelation of the glories awaiting the believer in the world to come, the coming of the Millennium, and the announcement that Jesus has brought the “mysteries” to the earth for the salvation of men. But before describing these, it may be as well to draw attention to the manifest likeness between the theology and cosmology of the Pistis Sophia proper and what has been said above of the tenets of the Ophites and of Valentinus.

At first sight, the Pistis Sophia in this respect seems to be almost entirely an Ophite book. The Ineffable One, as has been said, is not to be distinguished from the Ophite Bythos, while “the First Mystery looking inward and outward” is a fairly close parallel to the First Man and the Son of Man of the Ophite system. The names Sabaoth, Iao, and Jaldabaoth also appear both here and with the Ophites, although the last-named power now occupies a greatly inferior position to that assigned to him by them, and from a merely ignorant power has now become an actively malignant one. The work assigned to Sophia Without in the older system is here taken in the Place of the Middle by the Virgin of Light, who is throughout the working agent in the salvation of mankind; but it should be noted that she here operates directly and not through a grosser power as with the Ophites. The idea of a female divinity ordering the affairs of men for their good as a mother with her children had already gained possession of the heathen world in the character of (the Greek) Isis, and in the hint here given as to the resemblance between her delegates and the Virgin Mary, we may see, perhaps, the road by which the Christian world travelled towards that conception of the Theotokos or Mother of God which played such an important part in its later creed. Among the powers inferior to her the names and places are changed, but the general arrangement remains nearly the same as with the Ophites, especially the Ophites of the diagram. The starry world in particular here comes much into evidence, and is given more important functions than in any other Gnostic system except the Ophite[541]. The “Gates” of the firmaments are met with both here and in the Ophite prayers or “defences” recorded by Origen[542], and an allusion put by this last into the mouth of Celsus and not otherwise explained, to “gates that open of their own accord,” looks as if Origen’s heathen adversary may himself have come across the story of the Pistis Sophia[543]. The general hostility of this starry world and its rulers towards mankind is a leading feature in both systems.

On the other hand, the parallels between the theology of the Pistis Sophia and that of Valentinus are even closer, and are too important to be merely accidental. The complete identification of Jesus with the First Mystery strongly recalls the statement of Valentinus, rather slurred over by the Fathers, that Jesus was Himself the Joint Fruit or summary of the perfections of the whole Pleroma or Godhead, and is a much more Christian conception than that of the earlier Ophites as to His nature[544]. So, too, the curious theory that each of the lower worlds has its own “saviour” finds expression in both systems, as does the idea that Jesus received something from all the worlds through which He passed on His way to earth. One may even find a vivid reminiscence of the Valentinian nomenclature in the name of Pistis Sophia herself, which combines the names of the feminine members of the first and last syzygies of the Valentinian Dodecad[545], Pistis there being the spouse of Paracletus or the Legate, and Sophia that of Theletus or the Beloved, while the cause of her fall in the present book is the same as that assigned in the system of Valentinus. Hence it may appear that the author of the Pistis Sophia, whoever he may have been, was well acquainted with the Ophite and Valentinian theology, and that he continued it with modifications of his own after the innovating habit current among the Gnostics and noticed by Tertullian.

In the cosmology of the Pistis Sophia, again, the preference given to Valentinian rather than to the older Ophitic views is clearly marked. The cause of the descent of the light into matter in the first instance is no accident as with the Ophites, but is part of the large scheme for the evolution or, as the author calls it, the “emanation” of the universe which was devised and watched over in its smallest details by the First Mystery[546]. Whether the author accepted the wild story attributed to Valentinus by Irenaeus concerning the Fall of Sophia and her Ectroma, it is impossible to say, because, as we have seen, he omits all detailed description of the way in which the two higher worlds which we have called the heavens of the Ineffable One and the world of the First Mystery came into being[547]. But it is plain that both must have been made by or rather through Jesus, because it is stated in the mysterious five words written on the vesture of Jesus that it is through the First Mystery that all things exist, and that it was from him that all the emanations flowed forth[548]. As the Pistis Sophia also says that Jesus is Himself the First Mystery, this corresponds to the opening words of St John’s Gospel, that “by Him all things were made[549].” Hence the author of the Pistis Sophia, if confronted with the story of the Ectroma, would doubtless have replied that this was merely a myth designed to teach the danger for the uninstructed of acting on one’s own initiative instead of waiting for the commands of God, and that in his book he had told the same story in a slightly different way. This seems to be the only construction to be placed on the trials of Pistis Sophia herself, since her desire for light seems not to have been looked upon as in itself sinful, and the real cause of her downfall was the mistaking the light of Jaldabaoth for that of the Treasure-house. But her descent into Chaos, unlike the Fall of her prototype, apparently had nothing to do with the creation of the universe and its inhabitants, which in the Pistis Sophia seems to have taken place before the story opens. If they were supposed by the author to have originated in the passions of Sophia Without, as Hippolytus tells us Valentinus taught[550], they were none the less the direct work of Jesus, and the statement in Hippolytus, that in the Valentinian teaching Jesus made out of the supplication of Sophia Without a path of repentance, finds a sort of echo in the Pistis Sophia, where it is the “Metanoiae” or hymns of penitence many times repeated of Pistis Sophia, her antitype or copy, which bring Jesus to her succour. A further parallel may be found in Hippolytus’ other statement from Valentinus that Jesus gave this “supplication” power over the psychic substance which is called the Demiurge[551]. In the Pistis Sophia, the heroine defeats the Authades with the assistance of Jesus; and there does not seem much doubt that Pistis Sophia is eventually to receive her adversary the Authades’ place, an event which is foreshadowed by the quotation of the text “His bishopric let another take” in one of her penitential psalms[552]. It would also appear that Adamas, the wicked king of the Twelve Aeons, may be the Adversary or Diabolos described by the Valentinians[553] as the cosmocrator or ruler of this world, his rule being exercised in the Pistis Sophia through his servants, the Archons of “Heimarmene and the Sphere.” The epithet of Adamas or ἀδαμαστὸς given in classical literature to Hades as the Lord of Hell would seem appropriate enough in his case. This would only leave Beelzebub, prince of the demons, unaccounted for; but the author does not here give any detailed description of Chaos which may be supposed to be his seat. Although the omission was, as we shall see, amply repaired in other documents put forth by the sect, it may be here explained by the conviction of the nearness of the Parusia or Second Advent which marks the Pistis Sophia[554]. On the fulfilment of this hope, the Cosmos was, as we are informed, to be “caught up,” and all matter to be destroyed[555]. What need then to elaborate the description of its most malignant ministers?

The joys of the elect in the world to come, on the contrary, receive the fullest treatment. In the “completion of the Aeon, when the number of the assembly of perfect souls is made up[556],” or in other words when all pneumatic or spiritual men have laid aside their material bodies, they will ascend through all the firmaments and places of the lesser powers until they come to the last Parastates, where they are to reign with Jesus over all the worlds below it[557]. This is the place from which the power, which the Great Light, the legate of the Ineffable One, took from the First Precept and passed into the Kerasmos or Confusion, originated; and it was this world, or rather its ruler, who arranged Jeû and the other Powers of the Right Hand in their Places and thus set going the whole machinery of salvation. Its “light” or glory is said to be so tremendous that it can be compared to nothing in this world, and here Jesus will reign with the disciples for 1000 “years of light” which are equal to 365,000 of our years[558]. Here the thrones of the twelve “disciples” (μαθηταί) will depend on His[559], “but Mary Magdalene and John the Virgin shall be higher than all the disciples[560].” In the midst of these beatitudes they will apparently receive further instruction or further mysteries, the effect of which will be that they will at the conclusion of the Millennium be united with Jesus in so close a union that, as it is expressly said, they will become one with Him, and finally they will become members of the Godhead and, as it were, “the last limb of the Ineffable One[561].” In the meantime they will be at liberty to visit any of the worlds below them. All those who have received lesser mysteries,—that is to say, who have received a lesser degree of instruction and have not become wholly pneumatic or spiritual—will after death in this world go to the heaven of which they have received the mystery, or, in cases where their instruction has only just begun, be brought before the Virgin of Light, who will cause their souls to be sent back to earth in “righteous” bodies, which will of themselves seek after the mysteries, and, having obtained them, will, if time be allowed, achieve a more or less perfect salvation. Here, again, we meet with a close resemblance to the system of those later Ophites who possessed the diagram described by Origen; for Jesus tells His disciples that those who have only taken these lower mysteries will have to exhibit a seal or token (σύμβολον) and to make an “announcement” (ἀπόφασις) and a defence (ἀπολογία) in the different regions through which they pass after death[562]. No such requirements, He says, will be made from those who have received the higher mysteries, whose souls on leaving the body will become great streams of light, which will pass through all the lower places “during the time that a man can shoot an arrow,” the powers therein falling back terror-stricken from its light until the soul arrives at its appointed place. As, therefore, these seals and announcements and defences will be of no use to the disciples, the Jesus of the Pistis Sophia declares that He will not describe them in detail, they having been already set out in “the two great Books of Jeû[563].”

What now are these “mysteries” which have so tremendous an effect on their recipient as actually to unite him with the Deity after death? The Greek word μυστήριον, which is that used in the Coptic MS., does not seem to mean etymologically more than a secret, in which sense it was applied to the ceremonies or secret dramas exhibited, as has been said, at Eleusis and elsewhere, and later, to the Christian Eucharist[564]. In the early part of the Pistis Sophia it is the word used to denote the First Mystery or first and greatest emanation of God, who is withdrawn from human contemplation and, as it were, concealed behind a veil impenetrable by the senses of man. But in the part of the book with which we are now dealing it seems to refer not to hidden persons, but to secret things. These things seem to fall into two categories, one of which is spoken of as the Mystery of the Ineffable One, and the other as the Mysteries of the First Mystery. The Mystery of the Ineffable One is said to be one, but, with the provoking arithmetic peculiar to the book, it is immediately added that it “makes” three mysteries and also another five, while it is still one[565]. The Mysteries of the First Mystery on the other hand are said to be twelve in number, and these figures may possibly cover some allusion to the Ogdoad and the Dodecad of Valentinus[566]. It is also fairly clear that each of these Twelve Mysteries of the First Mystery must be some kind of ceremony, and a ceremony which can be performed without much preparation or many participants. This we may deduce from the following description of the merits of one of them:

“For the second mystery of the First Mystery, if it is duly accomplished in all its forms, and the man who accomplishes it shall speak the mystery over the head of a man on the point of going forth from the body, so that he throws it into his two ears:—even when the man who is going forth from the body shall have received it aforetime, and is a partaker of the word of Truth[567],—verily, I say unto you that when that man shall go forth from the body of matter, his soul will make a great flash of light, and will pass through every Place until it come into the kingdom of that mystery.

“But and if that man has not [aforetime] received that mystery, and is not a partaker of the word of Truth,—verily I say unto you that man when he shall go forth from the body shall not be judged in any Place whatever, nor shall he be tormented in any Place whatever, and no fire shall touch him on account of that great mystery of the Ineffable One which is in him; and all shall make haste to pass him from one hand to the other, and to guide him into every Place and every order, until they shall lead him before the Virgin of Light, all the Places being filled with fear before the sign of the mystery of the kingdom of that Ineffable One which shall be with him.

“And the Virgin of Light shall wonder and she shall try him, but he will not be led towards the light until he shall have accomplished all the service of the light of that mystery, that is to say, the purifications of the renunciation of the world and all the matter that is therein[568]. But the Virgin of Light shall seal that soul with the excellent seal which is this XXXX[569], and she shall have it cast in the same month in which it went forth from the body of matter into a righteous body which will find the God of Truth and the excellent mysteries in order that it may receive them by inheritance and also the light for eternity. Which is the gift of the second mystery of the First Mystery of that Ineffable One[570].”

The only ceremony to which such grace as is here set forth was likely to be attributed by any Christian in the early age of the Church was that of Baptism. It was called by writers like Gregory of Nazianza and Chrysostom a μυστήριον[571]; while we hear as early as St Paul’s time of “those who are baptized over [or on behalf of] the dead” (βαπτιξόμενοι ὑπὲρ τῶν νεκρῶν)[572], the theory being, according to Döllinger, that those who had wished during their lives to receive baptism but had not done so, could thus obtain the benefit of the prayers of the Church, which could not be offered for an unbaptized person[573]. So much was this the case with some sects, that it was an offence charged by writers like Tertullian against the Valentinians that they were in the habit of delaying baptism as long as possible and even of putting it off till they were about to die[574], as in the case in the text. Baptism, too, was spoken of in sub-Apostolic times as the “seal” (σφραγίς)[575], or impress, which may be that which the soul has to exhibit, both in the Ophite system and in that of the Pistis Sophia, to the rulers of the next world. In any event, the rite was looked upon by Catholic and heretic alike as an initiation or commencement of the process by which man was united with Christ. The other eleven “mysteries of the First Mystery” are not specifically described in the Pistis Sophia; but it is said that the receiving of any one of them will free its recipient’s soul from all necessity to show seals or defences to the lesser powers and will exalt him after his death to the rank of a king in the kingdom of light, although it will not make him equal to those who have received the mystery of the Ineffable One[576]. It therefore seems probable that these “twelve mysteries of the First Mystery” all refer to the rite of baptism, and are called twelve instead of one only to accord with some trifling juggling with words and letters such as was common with the followers of Valentinus[577]. That baptism was held in the sub-Apostolic age to be, in the words of Döllinger, “not a mere sign, pledge, or symbol of grace, but an actual communication of it wrought by the risen and glorified Christ on the men He would convert and sanctify, and a bond to unite the body of the Church with its Head[578],” will perhaps be admitted. According to the same author, St Paul teaches that “by Baptism man is incorporated with Christ, and puts on Christ, so that the sacramental washing does away with all natural distinctions or race;—Greek and Jew, slave and free, men and women, are one in Christ, members of His body, children of God and of the seed of Abraham[579].” He tells us also that the same Apostle “not only divides man into body and spirit, but distinguishes in the bodily nature, the gross, visible, bodily frame, and a hidden, inner, ‘spiritual’ body not subject to limits of space or cognizable by the senses; this last, which shall hereafter be raised, is alone fit for and capable of organic union with the glorified body of Christ, of substantial incorporation with it[580].” If Döllinger in the XIXth century could thus interpret St Paul’s words, is it extraordinary that the author of the Pistis Sophia should put the same construction on similar statements some sixteen centuries earlier? So the late Dr Hatch, writing of baptism in this connection, says: “The expressions which the more literary ages have tended to construe metaphorically were taken literally. It was a real washing away of sins; it was a real birth into a new life; it was a real adoption into a divine sonship[581].”

If this be so, it seems to follow that the Mystery of the Ineffable One must be the other and the greatest of the Christian sacraments. Jesus tells His disciples that it is the “One and unique word,” and that the soul of one who has received it “after going forth from the body of matter of the Archons” will become “a great flood of light” and will fly into the height, no power being able to restrain it, nor even to know whither it goes. He continues:

“It shall pass through all the Places of the Archons and all the Places of the emanations of light, nor shall it make any announcement nor defence nor give in any symbol; for no Power of the Archons nor of the emanations of light can draw nigh to that soul. But all the Places of the Archons and of the emanations of light shall sing praises, being filled with fear at the flood of light which clothes that soul, until it shall have passed through them all, and have come into the Place of the inheritance of the mystery which it has received, which is the mystery of the sole Ineffable One, and shall have become united with his members[582].”

He goes on to explain that the recipient of this mystery shall be higher than angels, archangels, and than even all the Powers of the Treasure-house of Light and those which are below it:

“He is a man in the Cosmos; but he is a king in the light. He is a man in the Cosmos, but he is not of the Cosmos, and verily I say unto you, that man is myself and I am that man.”

“And, in the dissolution of the Cosmos, when the universe shall be caught up, and when the number of perfect souls shall be caught up, and when I am become king in the middle of the last Parastates, and when I am king over all the emanations of light, and over the Seven Amen, and the Five Trees, and the Three Amen, and the Nine Guards, and over the Boy of a Boy, that is to say the Twin Saviours, and when I am king over the Twelve Saviours and all the numbers of perfect souls who have received the mystery of light, then all the men who have received the mystery of that Ineffable One shall be kings with me, and shall sit on my right hand and on my left in my kingdom. Verily I say unto you, Those men are I and I am those men. Wherefore I said unto you aforetime: You shall sit upon thrones on my right hand and on my left in my kingdom and shall reign with me. Wherefore I have not spared myself, nor have I been ashamed to call you my brethren and my companions, seeing that you will be fellow-kings with me in my kingdom. These things, therefore, I said unto you, knowing that I should give unto you the mystery of that Ineffable One, and that mystery is I and I am that mystery[583].”

That this is the supreme revelation up to which the author of the Pistis Sophia has been leading all through the book, there can hardly be any doubt. Its position shortly before the close of the book[584], the rhapsodic and almost rhythmical phrases with which the approach to it is obscured rather than guarded, and the way in which directly the revelation is made, the author falls off into merely pastoral matters relating to the lesser mysteries, all show that the author has here reached his climax. But does this revelation mean anything else than that Jesus is Himself the victim which is to be received in the Sacrament or μυστήριον of the Altar? That the Christians of the first centuries really thought that in the Eucharist they united themselves to Christ by receiving His Body and Blood there can be no question, and the dogma can have come as no novelty to those who, like the Ophites, had combined with Christianity the ideas which we have seen current among the Orphics as to the sacramental efficacy of the homophagous feast and the eating of the quivering flesh of the sacrifice which represented Dionysos. Döllinger gives the views of the primitive Church concisely when he says it is “because we all eat of one Eucharistic bread, and so receive the Lord’s body, that we all become one body, or as St Paul says, we become members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones.” “We are nourished by communion,” he continues, “with the substance of His flesh and blood, and so bound to the unity of His body, the Church; and thus what was begun in Baptism is continued and perfected in the Eucharist[585].” Thus, Justin Martyr, who lived in the reign of Antoninus Pius, says “the food which is blessed by the prayer of His word, and from which our blood and flesh by transmutation are nourished, is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh[586].” That the same idea was realized by the heretics may be gathered from what has been said above as to the wonder-working celebration of the Eucharist by Marcus, when the wine was made to change visibly into blood before the eyes of the recipient[587].

It is plain also that the Pistis Sophia does not look upon this perfect union as within the reach of all. Basilides, the first of the Egyptian Gnostics, had said that not one in a thousand or two in ten thousand were fit to be admitted to the higher mysteries, and the same phrase is repeated by Jesus Himself in one of the later documents of the MS. of which the Pistis Sophia forms part[588]. Those who were worthy of admission to the mysteries of the Ineffable One and of the First Mystery were the pneumatics or spiritual men predestined to them from before their birth. For the others, the psychic or animal men, there were the mysteries “of the light,” which are, so to speak, the first step on the ladder of salvation[589]. These are nowhere described in the Pistis Sophia or first document of the book, the hearer being therein always referred for their details to the two great Books of Jeû mentioned above, “which Enoch wrote when I (i.e. Jesus) spoke with him from the tree of knowledge and from the tree of life, which were in the Paradise of Adam[590].” It is here expressly said that Jesus’ own disciples have no need of them; but their effect is described as purifying the body of matter, and transforming their recipient into “light” of exceeding purity. On the death of one who has taken them all, his soul traverses the different heavens repeating the passwords, giving in the defences, and exhibiting the symbols peculiar to each mystery until it reaches the abode assigned to its particular degree of spiritual illumination. These mysteries of the light are open to the whole world and there is some reason for thinking they are the sacraments of the Catholic Church, the members of which body, Irenaeus says, the “heretics” (Qy the Valentinians?) held not to be saved but to be only capable of salvation[591]. If the recipient of these lesser mysteries dies before complete initiation, he has to undergo a long and painful series of reincarnations, his soul being sent back into the Sphere of Destiny and eventually into this world by the Virgin of Light, who will, however, take care that it is placed in a “righteous” body which shall strive after the mysteries until it finds them. But the way to these lower mysteries is the complete renunciation of this world. Man naturally and normally is entirely hylic or material, being, as Jesus tells His disciples in the Pistis Sophia, “the very dregs of the Treasure-house, of the Places of those on the Right Hand, in the Middle, and on the Left Hand, and the dregs of the Unseen Ones and of the Archons, and, in a word, the dregs of them all[592].” Hence it is only by the cleansing grace of the mysteries that he can hope to escape the fate which is coming upon the Kerasmos, and to obtain these, he must avoid further pollution.

“Wherefore preach you to the whole race of men, saying: Slacken not day and night until ye find the cleansing mysteries. Say unto them: Renounce the world and all the matter that is therein; for whoso buys and sells in the world and eats and drinks in its matter, and lives in all its cares and all its conversations, takes unto himself other matter as well as his own matter.... Wherefore I said unto you aforetime: Renounce the whole world and all the matter that is therein lest ye add other matter to your own matter. Wherefore preach ye to the whole race of men ... cease not to seek day and night and stay not your hand until ye find the cleansing mysteries which will cleanse you so as to make you pure light, that ye may go into the heights and inherit the light of my kingdom[593].”

We see, then, that the author of the Pistis Sophia really contemplated the formation of a Church within a Church, where a group of persons claiming for themselves special illumination should rule over the great body of the faithful, these last being voluntarily set apart from all communion with their fellows[594]. This was so close a parallel to what actually occurred in Egypt in the IVth century, when the whole male population was said with some exaggeration to have embraced the monastic life[595], and submitted themselves to the rule of an ambitious and grasping episcopate, as to give us a valuable indication as to the authorship and date of the book. It may be said at the outset that the conception of the universe which appears throughout is so thoroughly Egyptian that it must have been written for Egyptian readers, who alone could have been expected to understand it without instruction. The idea of the Supreme Being as an unfathomable abyss was, as has been said in Chapter II, a very old one in Egypt, where one of the oldest cosmogonies current made Nu or the sea of waters the origin of both gods and men[596]. So was the peculiar theory that the lesser gods were the limbs or members of the Supreme[597]. An Ogdoad[598] or assembly of eight gods arranged in syzygies or couples was also well known in the time of the early dynasties, as was the Dodecad of twelve gods which Herodotus knew, and which M. Maspero refers on good evidence to the time of the Pyramid-Builders[599]. So was the view that men and other material things were made from the tears of the celestial powers[600], a notion well known to Proclus the Neo-Platonist, who attributed it to the legendary Orpheus[601]. Not less Egyptian—perhaps in its origin exclusively Egyptian—is the view that the knowledge of the places of the world after death and their rulers was indispensable to the happiness of the dead. “Whosoever,” says M. Maspero in commenting upon some funerary texts of the Ramesside period, “knows the names of these (gods) while still on earth and is acquainted with their places in Amenti, will arrive at his own place in the other world and will be in all the places reserved for those who are justified[602].” The resemblance between the system of the Pistis Sophia and the doctrines of the Egyptian religion in the days of the Pharaohs has been pointed out in detail by the veteran Egyptologist the late Prof. Lieblein and has been approved by M. Maspero[603]. It extends to particular details as well as to general ideas, as we see from the ritual inscribed on the tombs at Thebes, where each “circle” or division of the next world is said to have its own song and its own “mystery,” an idea often met with in the Pistis Sophia[604]. Even the doctrine in the Pistis Sophia that the dead had to exhibit a “seal” as well as a “defence” to the guardians of the heavenly places is explained by the Egyptian theory that no spell was effective without an amulet, which acted as a kind of material support to it[605]. The greater part of the allusions in the Pistis Sophia are in fact unintelligible, save to those with some acquaintance with the religious beliefs of the Pharaonic Egyptians.

At the same time it is evident that the MS. of the Pistis Sophia that has come down to us is not the original form of the book. All the scholars who have studied it are agreed that the Coptic version has been made from a Greek original by a scribe who had no very profound acquaintance with the first-named tongue[606]. This appears not only from the frequent appearance in it of Greek words following Coptic ones of as nearly as possible the same meaning; but from the fact that the scribe here and there gives us others declined according to the rules not of Coptic but of Greek accidence. We must therefore look for an author who, though an Egyptian and acquainted with the native Egyptian religion, would naturally have written in Greek; and on the whole there is no one who fulfils these requirements so well as Valentinus himself. The fact that the author never quotes from the Gospel according to St John indicates that it had not come to his knowledge; for the opening chapter of St John’s Gospel contains many expressions that could easily on the Gnostic system of interpretation be made to accord with the Valentinian theology, and is in fact so used by later writers of the same school as the author of the Pistis Sophia[607]. Now the first direct and acknowledged quotation from St John’s Gospel that we have is that made by Theophilus, who was made bishop of Antioch in A.D. 170, and the generally received opinion is that this Gospel, whenever written, was not widely known long before this date[608]. The only founders of Gnostic sects of Egyptian birth prior to this were Basilides and Valentinus, and of these two, Valentinus is the more likely author, because he, unlike his predecessor, evidently taught for general edification, and possessed, as the Fathers agree, a numerically large following. We have, moreover, some reason for thinking that Valentinus actually did write a book with some such title as the Sophia. Tertullian, in his declamation against the Valentinians, quotes a sentence from “the Wisdom (Lat. Sophia) not of Valentinus but of Solomon[609].” It has been suggested that he is here referring to some saying of the Valentinian aeon Sophia; but no writings would in the nature of things be attributed to her, and, as M. Amélineau points out, it is more natural to think that he was here comparing a book with a book[610]. This figure of rhetoric was a favourite one with Tertullian, for in his treatise De Carne Christi we find him quoting in like manner the Psalms—“not the Psalms of Valentinus, the apostate, heretic, and Platonist, but the Psalms of David[611].” The fact that the story in the British Museum MS. is called Pistis Sophia instead of Sophia only need not hinder us from identifying this with the work presumably referred to by Tertullian, because this title is, as has been said, the work of another scribe than those who transcribed the original; and Pistis Sophia is sometimes spoken of in the MS. itself as Sophia only[612]. Moreover, there is some reason for thinking that certain of the Fathers and even their Pagan adversaries had seen and read the story of Pistis Sophia. The allusion quoted above from Origen to gates opening of their own accord seems to refer to one of its episodes, and Tertullian, in the treatise in which he says he is exposing the original tenets of the sect[613], uses many expressions that he can hardly have borrowed from any other source. Thus, he speaks of Sophia “breaking away from her spouse[614]” which is the expression used by Pistis Sophia in her first Metanoia and is in no way applicable to the Valentinian Sophia of Irenaeus or Hippolytus. He again speaks of the same Sophia as being all but swallowed up and dissolved in “the substance” evidently of Chaos, which is the fate which Pistis Sophia anticipates for herself in the MS. Tertullian, like the Pistis Sophia, also assigns to the psychic substance the place of honour or right hand in the quasi-material world, while the hylic is relegated in both to the left hand[615]. The Paradise of Adam is said by him to be fixed by Valentinus “above the third heaven[616]” as it is in the Pistis Sophia, if, as we may suppose, the soul of the protoplast dwelt in the same place as that of Elijah. The name of Ecclesia or the Church is given not only to a particular aeon in the Pleroma, but also to the divine power breathed into man from a higher world in both Tertullian and the Pistis Sophia[617], and, in the treatise De Carne Christi, Tertullian alludes contemptuously to an heretical doctrine that Christ possessed “any new kind of flesh miraculously obtained from the stars[618],” which seems to refer to the taking by Jesus in the opening of the Pistis Sophia of a body from “Barbelo” the goddess or Triple Power set over matter and inspiring the benefic planet Venus. For all which reasons it seems probable that in the Pistis Sophia we have the translation of an authentic work by Valentinus.

The Pistis Sophia, however, is not the only work in the British Museum MS. The first and second books of it, as they are called by the annotator, come to an end, rather abrupt but evidently intentional, on the 252nd page of the MS. There then appears the heading in the hand of the annotator “Part of the Texts of the Saviour[619],” and on this follow two pages dealing with the “members” of the Ineffable One, as to which it is expressly said that only a partial revelation is made[620]. These seem to have slipped out of their proper place, and are followed by two discontinuous extracts from another treatise, the second of which is also headed by the annotator “Part of the Texts of the Saviour.” This second part, which we shall venture to take before the other, is evidently the introduction to or the commencement of a new treatise, for it begins with the statement that “After they had crucified Our Lord Jesus He rose from the dead on the third day,” and that His disciples gathered round Him, reminding Him that they had left all to follow Him[621]. Jesus “standing on the shore of the sea Ocean,” then makes invocation to the “Father of every Fatherhood, boundless light,” in a prayer composed of Egyptian and Hebrew words jumbled together after the fashion of the spells in the Magic Papyri[622]. He then shows the disciples the “disk of the sun” as a great dragon with his tail in his mouth drawn by four white horses and the disk of the moon like a ship drawn by two white steers[623]. The two steering oars of this last are depicted as a male and a female dragon who take away the light from the rulers of the stars among whom they move. Jesus and His disciples are then translated to the place called the “Middle Way[624].” He there describes how the Archons of Adamas rebelled and persisted in engendering and bringing forth “rulers and archangels and angels and ministers and decans.” We further hear, for the first time, that the Twelve Aeons, instead of being, as in the Pistis Sophia, all under the rule of Adamas, are divided into two classes, one Jabraoth ruling over six of them and Sabaoth Adamas over the other six; that Jabraoth and his subjects repented and practised “the mysteries of the light,” including, as we have seen, abstinence from generation[625], whereupon they were taken up by Jeû to the light of the sun between the “places of the middle and those of the left.” “Sabaoth Adamas,” on the other hand, with his subjects to the number of 1800, were bound to the sphere, 360 powers being set over them, the 360 being controlled by the five planets Saturn, Mars, Mercury, Venus, and Jupiter. Jesus then describes in great detail the different tortures in the Middle Way and two other hells called Chaos and Amenti, wherein the souls of uninitiated men who commit sins are tormented between their incarnations[626], the final punishment being in the worst cases annihilation. He then affords His disciples a vision of “fire and water and wine and blood” which He declares He brought with Him on His Incarnation, and celebrates a sacrament which He calls “the baptism of the First Oblation,” but which seems to be a peculiar form of the Eucharist with invocations in the jargon alluded to above, and a thaumaturgic conversion of the wine used in it into water and vice versâ[627]. There are several lacunae in this part of the MS., and the tortures for certain specified sins are differently given in different places, so that it is probable that with the Part of the Texts of the Saviour has here been mixed extracts from another document whose title has been lost[628].

The remaining document of the British Museum MS., being the third in order of place, was probably taken from the same book as that last described, and was placed out of its natural order to satisfy the pedantry of the scribes, the rule in such cases being that the longer document should always come first. Like its successor, it deals largely with the “punishments” of the souls who have not received the mysteries of the light, and introduces a new and still more terrible hell in the shape of the “Dragon of Outer Darkness” which it declares to be a vast dragon surrounding the world, having his tail in his mouth, and containing twelve chambers, wherein the souls of the uninitiated dead are tortured after their transmigrations are ended until they reach the annihilation reserved for them at the last judgment[629]. There is also given here a very curious account of man’s invisible part, which is said to be made up of the “Power” infused into it by the Virgin of Light which returns to its giver after death[630], and the Moira or Fate which it derives from the Sphere of Destiny and has as its sole function to lead the man it inhabits to the death he is predestined to die[631]. Then there is the Counterfeit of the Spirit, which is in effect a duplicate of the soul proper and is made out of the matter of the wicked Archons. This not only incites the soul to sin, but follows it about after death, denouncing to the powers set over the punishments the sins it has induced the soul to commit[632]. All these punishments, to describe which is evidently the purpose of all the extracts from the Texts of the Saviour here given, are escaped by those who have received the mysteries.

The Texts of the Saviour therefore clearly belong to a later form of Gnosticism than the Pistis Sophia properly so called. The author’s intention is evidently to frighten his readers with the fate reserved for those who do not accept the teaching of the sect. For this purpose the division of mankind into pneumatic, psychic, and hylic is ignored[633], and this is especially plain in certain passages where the torments after death of those who follow “the doctrines of error” are set forth. Magic, which has been spoken of with horror in the Pistis Sophia, is here made use of in the celebration of the rites described, and the miraculous power of healing the sick and raising the dead, though said to be of archontic, i.e. diabolic, origin is here recommended as a means to be employed under certain safeguards for the purpose of converting “the whole world[634].” Even the duration of the punishments and the different bodies into which the souls of the men are to be cast are made to depend upon the relative positions of the stars and planets which seem to be interpreted according to the rules of the astrology of the time,—a so-called science, which is spoken of scornfully in the Pistis Sophia itself[635]. Yet it is evident that the author or authors of the Texts of the Saviour are acquainted with the book which precedes it; for in a description of the powers which Jeû, who appears in both as the angelic arranger of the Kerasmos, “binds” in the five planets set to rule over it, we learn that he draws a power from “Pistis Sophia, the daughter of Barbelo” and binds it in the planet Venus or Aphrodite[636]. As this is the only reference to her, and receives no further explanation, it is plain that the writer assumed his readers to be well acquainted with Pistis Sophia’s history, and Jeû, Melchisidek, Adamas, and Jaldabaoth, now one of the torturers in Chaos, appear, as we have seen, in both works. The author of the Texts of the Saviour also shows himself the avowed opponent of the Pagan deities still worshipped in the early Christian centuries, as is evidenced by his making not only the Egyptian Typhon, but Adonis, Persephone, and Hecate, fiends in hell. Oddly enough, however, he gives an explanation of the myth of the two springs of memory and oblivion that we have seen in the Orphic gold plates in the following passage, which may serve as an example of the style of the book:

“Jesus said: When the time set by the Sphere of Destiny[637] for a man that is a persistent slanderer to go forth from the body is fulfilled, there come unto him Abiuth and Charmon, the receivers of Ariel[638], and lead forth his soul from the body, that they may take it about with them for three days, showing it the creatures of the world. Thereafter they drag it into Amenti unto Ariel that he may torment it in his torments for eleven months and twenty-one days. Thereafter they lead it into Chaos unto Jaldabaoth and his forty-nine demons, that each of his demons may set upon it for eleven months and twenty-one days with whips of smoke. Thereafter they lead it into rivers of smoke and seas of fire that they may torment it therein eleven months and twenty-one days. Thereafter they lead it on high into the Middle Way that each of the Archons of the Middle Way may torment it with his own torments another eleven months and twenty-one days. And thereafter they lead it unto the Virgin of Light who judges the righteous and the sinners, and she shall judge it. And when the Sphere is turned round, she delivers it to her receivers that they may cast it forth among the Aeons of the Sphere. And the servants of the Sphere lead it into the water which is below the Sphere, that the boiling steam may eat into it, until it cleanse it thoroughly. Then Jaluha the receiver of Sabaoth Adamas, bearing the cup of oblivion delivers it to the soul, that it may drink therein and forget all the places and the things therein through which it has passed[639]. And it is placed in an afflicted body wherein it shall spend its appointed time[640].”

The object of the cup of oblivion is obviously that the wicked man may learn nothing from the torments he has endured. In the case of the righteous but uninitiated dead, the baleful effect of this cup will be annulled by “the Little Sabaoth the Good” who will administer to him another cup “of perception and understanding and wisdom” which will make the soul seek after the mysteries of light, on finding which it will inherit light eternal.

It would be easy to see in these features of the Texts of the Saviour the work of Marcus the magician who, as was said in a former chapter, taught, according to the Fathers, a corrupted form of the doctrine of Valentinus for his own interested purposes[641]. The distinguishing feature about his celebration of the Eucharist is the same as that given in the Texts of the Saviour, and as Clement of Alexandria was acquainted with a sect in his day which substituted water for wine therein[642], it is probable that Marcosians were to be found during the latter part of the IInd century in Egypt. It is also to be noted that the annotator has written upon the blank leaf which separates the first and second books of the Pistis Sophia a cryptogram concealing, apparently, the names of the Ineffable One and the other higher powers worshipped by Valentinus, and this seems to be constructed in much the same way as the isopsephisms and other word-puzzles attributed by Irenaeus to Marcus[643]. The mixture of Hebrew names and words with Egyptian ones in the prayer of Jesus given in the Texts of the Saviour would agree well with what the last-named Father says about Marcus being a Jew, and a prayer which he represents Marcus as making over the head of a convert baptized into his sect is couched in a jargon of the same character[644]. On the other hand, the opening sentence of the book calls Jesus “our Lord,” which Irenaeus tells us the Valentinians carefully abstained from doing[645], and the long and detailed description of the different hells and their tortures is much more Egyptian than Jewish[646]. The remark attributed to Basilides as to one in a thousand and two in ten thousand being worthy to take the higher mysteries is here put into the mouth of Jesus, and perhaps it would be safer to attribute for the present the Texts of the Saviour not to Marcus himself, but to some later Gnostic who fused together his teaching with that of the earlier and more disinterested professors of Egyptian Gnosticism.

The same remarks apply with but little modification to some other fragments of Gnostic writings which have come down to us. In the Bodleian Library at Oxford is to be seen a MS. written on papyrus, which was brought to this country by the Abyssinian traveller, Bruce. This also is in the Sahidic dialect of Coptic, and although it has been badly damaged and the ink is rapidly disappearing in the damp climate of Oxford, yet a copy taken nearly a century ago by Woide makes its decipherment possible in most places. The Bruce Papyrus, like the British Museum parchment MS., contains more than one document. Unfortunately the arrangement of the leaves is by no means certain, and the two scholars who have studied it most thoroughly differ almost as widely as possible as to the order of its contents. M. Amélineau, a celebrated Egyptologist and Coptic scholar, who published in 1882 a copy of the text with a French translation in the Notices et Extraits of the Académie des Inscriptions, considers that the treatises contained in it are only two in number, the first being called by the author in what seems to be its heading The Book of the Knowledge of the Invisible God and the second The Book of the Great Word in Every Mystery. Dr Carl Schmidt, of the University of Berlin, on the other hand, who, like M. Amélineau, has studied the Papyrus at Oxford, thinks that he can distinguish in the Bruce Papyrus no less than six documents, of which the first two are according to him the two books of Jeû referred to in the Pistis Sophia, two others, fragments of Gnostic prayers, the fifth a fragment on the passage of the soul through the Archons of the Middle Way, and the sixth, an extract from an otherwise unknown Gnostic work which he does not venture to identify further[647]. To enter into the controversy raised by this diversity of opinion would take one outside the limits of the present work; but it may be said that at least one, and that the most important, of the documents in question must be later than the Pistis Sophia. Not only does this—which M. Amélineau calls the Book of the Knowledge of the Invisible God and Dr Schmidt “Unbekanntes Altgnostisches Werk”—quote the opening words of St John’s Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God without whom nothing was made[648],” which, as has been said, the author of the Pistis Sophia was unable to do; but it mentions in briefer form than this last the heavenly origin of the souls of the Twelve Apostles[649]. There is also in the same document a description of what appears to be the “emanation of the universe,” in which the following passage occurs:

“And He [i.e. the Ineffable One] heard them [a prayer by the lesser powers is referred to]. He sent them powers capable of discernment, and knowing the arrangement of the hidden Eons. He sent them according to the arrangement of those who are hidden[650]. He established their Orders according to the orders of the Height, and according to the hidden arrangement they began from below upward in order that the building might unite them. He created the aëry earth as a place of habitation for those who had gone forth, in order that they might dwell thereon until those which were below them should be made strong. Then he created the true habitation within it[651], the Place of Repentance (Metanoia) within it, the Place of Repentance within it, the antitype of Aerodios[652]. Then [he created] the Place of Repentance within it, the antitype of Autogenes (Self-begotten or, perhaps, ‘of his own kind’). In this Place is purification in the name of Autogenes who is god over them and powers were set there over the source of the waters which they make to go forth (?). Here are the names of the powers who are set over the Water of Life: Michar and Micheu, and they are purified in the name of Barpharanges[653]. Within these are the Aeons of Sophia. Within these is the true Truth. And in this Place is found Pistis Sophia, as also the pre-existent Jesus the Living, Aerodios, and his Twelve Aeons[654].”

What is intended to be conveyed by this it is difficult to say in the absence of the context; but the Pistis Sophia mentioned is evidently the heroine of the book of that name, and the abrupt mention of her name without explanation shows, as in the Texts of the Saviour, that the author supposed his readers to be acquainted with her story. While this part of the Papyrus may possibly be an attempt by some later writer to fulfil the promise to tell His disciples at some future time the “emanation of the universe” frequently made by Jesus in the Pistis Sophia, it cannot be earlier in date than this last-named document.

Another large fragment in the Bruce Papyrus is also connected with that which has been called above the Texts of the Saviour, and helps to link up this with the system of the Pistis Sophia proper. In the first part of the Texts of the Saviour (i.e. the fourth document in the British Museum book), Jesus, as has been mentioned, celebrates with prodigies a sacrament which He calls the “Baptism of the first Oblation”; and He tells them at the same time that there is also a baptism of perfumes, another baptism of the Holy Spirit of Light, and a Spiritual Chrism, besides which He promises them “the great mystery of the Treasure-house of Light and the way to call upon it so as to arrive thither,” a “baptism of those who belong to the Right Hand,” and of “those who belong to the Middle” and other matters. These promises are in some sort fulfilled in that part of the Bruce Papyrus which Dr Schmidt will have it is “the Second Book of Jeû[655],” where Jesus celebrates with accompanying prodigies three sacraments which He calls the Baptism of Fire of the Virgin of the Treasure-house of Light, the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, and a “mystery” which is said to take away from His disciples “the wickedness of the archons[656].” The details of these vary but very slightly from the “Baptism of the First Oblation” celebrated by Jesus in the Texts of the Saviour, and seem to have been written in continuation and as an amplification of it. But the Texts of the Saviour, as we have seen, also mention Pistis Sophia in such a way as to presuppose an acquaintance with her history; and the presumption that the author of the Bruce Papyrus had read the book bearing her name is confirmed by the repetition in it of the names of Jeû, here called “the Great Man, King of the great aeon of light,” the Great Sabaoth the Good, the Great Iao the Good, Barbelo[657], the Great Light, and all the “Amens,” “Twin Saviours,” “Guardians of Veils” and the rest who are classed together in the Pistis Sophia as the great emanations of light, and mentioned in a connection which shows them to have the same functions in all these documents[658]. When we add to these the repetition of the tradition, formally stated for the first time in the Pistis Sophia, that Jesus spent twelve years with His disciples between His Resurrection and His Ascension[659], there can be little doubt that this part of the Papyrus Bruce also is subsequent to the Pistis Sophia. Similar arguments, which are only omitted here for the sake of greater clearness, apply to all the rest of Dr Schmidt’s documents, and it follows that none of the contents of the Papyrus can be considered as any part of the “Books of Jeû” mentioned in the Pistis Sophia[660], which, therefore, remains the parent document on which all the others are based. As to their absolute date, it seems impossible to arrive at any useful conclusion. Both M. Amélineau and Dr Schmidt are agreed that the Coptic Papyrus is a translation from Greek originals; and M. Amélineau does not put this too far forward when he suggests that it was made in the IInd and IIIrd century of our era[661]. Dr Schmidt is probably nearer the mark when he puts the actual transcription of the Papyrus as dating in the earliest instance from the Vth century. His earliest date for any of the Greek originals is the first half of the IIIrd century[662].

If now we put these later documents—the Texts of the Saviour and those contained in the Bruce Papyrus—side by side, we notice a marked, if gradual, change of tendency from the comparatively orthodox Christianity of the Pistis Sophia proper. In the Texts of the Saviour notably, the fear of hell and its punishments is, as we have seen, present throughout, and seems to be the sanction on which the author relies to compel his readers to accept his teaching. In the documents of the Bruce Papyrus this is also to be found in more sporadic fashion, nearly the whole of the book being occupied by the means by which men are to escape the punishment of their sins. These methods of salvation are all of them what we have earlier called gnostical or magical, and consist simply in the utterance of “names” given us in some sort of crypto-grammatic form, and the exhibition of “seals” or rather impressions (χαρακτῆρες) here portrayed with great attention to detail, which, however, remain utterly meaningless for us. Thus to quote again from what Dr Schmidt calls the Second Book of Jeû, Jesus imparts to His disciples the “mystery” of the Twelve Aeons in these words:

“When you have gone forth from the body and come into the First Aeon, the Archons of that Aeon will come before you. Then stamp upon yourselves this seal AA, the name of which is zôzesê. Utter this once only. Take in your two hands this number, 1119. When you have stamped upon yourselves this seal and have uttered its name once only, speak these defences; ‘Back! Protei Persomphôn Chous, O Archons of the First Aeon, for I invoke Êazazêôzazzôzeôz.’ And when the Archons of the First Aeon shall hear that name, they will be filled with great fear, they will flee away to the West, to the Left Hand, and you will enter in[663]”:

and the same process with different names and seals is to be repeated with the other eleven aeons. This is, of course, not religion, such as we have seen in the writings of Valentinus, nor even the transcendental mysticism of the Pistis Sophia, but magic, and magic of a peculiarly Egyptian form. The ancient Egyptian had always an intense fear of the world after death, and from the first conceived a most gloomy view of it. The worshippers of Seker or Socharis, a god so ancient that we know him only as a component part of the triune or syncretic divinity of late dynastic times called Ptah-Seker-Osiris, depicted it as a subterranean place deprived of the light of the sun, hot and thirsty, and more dreary than even the Greek Hades or the Hebrew Sheol.

“The West is a land of sleep and darkness heavy, a place where those who settle in it, slumbering in their forms, never wake to see their brethren; they never look any more on their father and their mother, their heart leaves hold of their wives and children. The living water which earth has for every one there, is foul here where I am; though it runs for every one who is on earth, foul is for me the water which is with me. I do not know any spot where I would like to be, since I reached this valley! Give me water which runs towards me, saying to me, ‘Let thy jug never be without water’; bring to me the north wind, on the brink of water, that it may fan me, that my heart may cool from its pain. The god whose name is Let Complete Death Come, when he has summoned anybody to him, they come to him, their hearts disturbed by the fear of him; for there is nobody dares look up to him from amongst gods and men, the great are to him as the small and he spares not [those] who love him, but he tears the nursling from the mother as he does the old man, and everyone who meets him is filled with affright[664].”

The priests took care that such a picture did not fade from want of reproduction and, true to the genius of their nation, elaborated it until its main features are almost lost to us under the mass of details[665]. Especially was this the case with the religion of the Sun-God Ra, who after his fusion with Amon of Thebes at the establishment of the New Empire came to overshadow all the Egyptian cults save that of Osiris. The tombs of the kings at Thebes are full of pictures of the land of this Amenti or the West, in which horror is piled upon horror, and book after book was written that there should be no mistake about the fate lying in wait for the souls of men[666]. In these we see the dead wandering from one chamber to another, breathing a heavy and smoke-laden air[667], and confronted at every step by frightful fiends compounded from the human and bestial forms, whose office is to mutilate, to burn, and to torture the soul. The means of escape open to the dead was, under the XXth dynasty, neither the consciousness of a well-spent life nor the fatherly love of the gods, but the knowledge of passwords and mysterious names[668]. Every chamber had a guardian who demanded of the dead his own name, without repeating which the soul was not allowed to enter[669]. Every fiend had to be repelled by a special exorcism and talisman[670], and every “circle” through which the dead passed had its own song and “mystery,” which it behoved the dead to know[671]. Only thus could he hope to win through to the Land of Osiris, where he might enjoy a relative beatitude and be free to go about and visit the other heavenly places[672]. For this purpose, the map, so to speak, of the route was engraved on the walls of the tombs of those who could afford it, and the necessary words to be said written down. Those who were not so rich or so lucky were thought to be parcelled out, like the fellahin of that day, or the villeins of feudal times, in colonies among the different districts of the lower world, where they flourished or perished according to the number of talismans or “protections” that they possessed[673]. “If ever,” says M. Maspero, “there were in Pharaonic Egypt mysteries and initiates, as there were in Greece and in Egypt under the Greeks, these books later than the Book of the Other World and the Book of the Gates are books of mystery and of initiates[674].” Thereafter, he goes on to say, the ancient popular religion disappeared more and more from Egypt, to give place to the overmastering sense of the terrors of death[675] and the magical means by which it was sought to lighten them.

It is to the survival of these ideas that books like the Texts of the Saviour and those in the Papyrus Bruce must be attributed. The Gnostic Christianity of Valentinus, direct descendant as it was of the amalgam of Christianity with pre-Christian faiths which the Ophites had compounded, no sooner reached the great mass of the Egyptian people than it found itself under their influence. In this later Gnostic literature we hear no more of the Supreme Father of Valentinus, “who alone” in his words, “is good”; no more weight is laid upon the Faith, Hope, and Love who were the first three members of his Heavenly Man; and the Jesus in whom were summed up all the perfections of the Godhead becomes transformed into a mere mystagogue or revealer of secret words and things. All expectation of the immediate arrival of the Parusia or Second Coming, when the world is to be caught up and all wickedness to be destroyed, has passed into the background, as has also the millennium in which the faithful were, in accordance with a very early belief in Egypt, to share the felicity of those who had been kings on earth[676]. Instead we have only appeals to the lowest motives of fear and the selfish desire to obtain higher privileges than ordinary men. Even the avoidance of crime has no other sanction, and complete withdrawal from the world is advocated on merely prudential grounds; while rejection of the mysteries is the unpardonable sin:

“When I have gone unto the light” (says the Jesus of the Texts of the Saviour to His disciples) “preach unto the whole world, saying: Renounce the whole world and the matter that is therein, all its cares, its sins, and in a word all its conversation, that ye may be worthy of the mysteries of the light, that ye may be saved from all the torments which are in the judgments. Renounce murmuring, that ye may be worthy of the mysteries of the light, that ye may escape the judgment of that dog-faced one.... Renounce wrath, that ye may be worthy of the mysteries of the light, that ye may be saved from the fire of the seas of the dragon-faced one.... Renounce adultery, that ye may be worthy of the mysteries of the kingdom of light, that ye may be saved from the seas of sulphur and pitch of the lion-faced one.... Say unto them that abandon the doctrines of truth of the First Mystery ‘Woe unto you, for your torment shall be worse than that of all men, for ye shall dwell in the great ice and frost and hail in the midst of the Dragon of the Outer Darkness, and ye shall escape no more from the world from that hour unto evermore, but ye shall be as stones therein, and in the dissolution of the universe ye shall be annihilated, so that ye exist no more for ever[677]’.”

The priests who engraved the horrors of the next world on the walls of the royal tombs at Thebes would probably have written no differently.

Gnosticism then, in Egypt soon relapsed into the magic from which it was originally derived; and we can no longer wonder that the Fathers of the Church strove as fiercely against it as they did. In the age when books like the Texts of the Saviour and the fragments in the Papyrus Bruce could be written, the methods of Clement of Alexandria, who treated Valentinus and his school as Christians bent on the truth though led into error by a misunderstanding of the purport of heathen philosophy, were clearly out of place. “Ravening wolves,” “wild beasts,” “serpents,” and “lying rogues” are some of the terms the Fathers now bestow upon them[678], and as soon as the conversion of Constantine put the sword of the civil power into their hands, they used it to such effect that Gnosticism perished entirely in some places and in others dragged on a lingering existence under other forms. The compromise that had served for some time to reconcile the great mass of the unthinking people to the religion of Christ thus broke down[679]; and Egypt again showed her power of resisting and transforming all ideas other than those which thousands of years had made sacred to her people.

Meanwhile, the bridge between Paganism and Christianity which Gnosticism afforded had been crossed by many. As the Ophites showed the inhabitants of Asia Minor how to combine the practice of their ancestral worships with the Christian revelation, so Valentinus and his successors allowed the rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven without the difficulties attendant on the passage of the camel through the needle’s eye. The authors of the Texts of the Saviour and the Bruce Papyrus went further and made it possible for the Egyptian fellah—then as now hating change, and most tenacious of his own beliefs—to accept the hope of salvation offered by the new faith while giving up none of his traditional lore upon the nature of the next world. In this way, doubtless, many thousands were converted to Christianity who would otherwise have kept aloof from it, and thus hastened its triumph over the State. But the law which seems to compel every religion to borrow the weapons of its adversaries leads sometimes to strange results, and this was never more plainly marked than in the case of Egypt. The history of Egyptian Christianity has yet to be written; but it seems from the first to have been distinguished in many important particulars from that which conquered the West, and it is impossible to attribute these differences to any other source than Gnosticism. The Pharaonic Egyptian had always been fanatical, submissive like all Africans to priestly influence, and easily absorbed in concern for his own spiritual welfare. Given the passion for defining the undefinable and the love of useless detail which marked everything in the old faith, and in systems like those of the Coptic texts which form the subject of this chapter he had the religion to his mind. Nor were other and less abstract considerations wanting. The life of a scribe or temple servant, as the race began to lose the vigour which at one time had made them the conquerors of Asia, had come to be looked upon by the mass of the people as that which was most desirable on earth[680]; and here was a faith which called upon the Egyptian to withdraw from the world and devote himself to the care of his own soul. Hence the appeal of Gnosticism to those who would escape hell to renounce all earthly cares fell upon good ground, and Egypt was soon full of ignorant ascetics withdrawn from the life of labour and spending their days in ecstasy or contemplation until roused to seditious or turbulent action at the bidding of their crafty and ambitious leaders. For these monks and hermits the Hellenistic civilization might as well not have existed; but they preserved their native superstitions without much modification, and the practices of magic, alchemy, and divination were rife among them[681]. So, too, was the constant desire to enquire into the nature and activities of the Deity which they had brought with them from their old faith, and which nearly rent Christianity in twain when it found expression in the Arian, the Monophysite, and the Monothelite controversies. In the meantime, the Catholic Church had profoundly modified her own methods in the directions which the experience of the Gnostics had shown to be profitable. The fear of hell came to occupy a larger and larger part in her exhortations, and apocalypse after apocalypse was put forth in which its terrors were set out with abundant detail. Ritual necessarily became of immense importance under the pressure of converts who believed in the magical efficacy of prayers and sacraments, in which every word and every gesture was of mysterious import, and the rites of the Church were regarded more and more as secrets on which only those fully instructed might look. The use in them of pictures, flowers, incense, music, and all the externals of the public worship of heathen times, which according to Gibbon would have shocked a Tertullian or a Lactantius could they have returned to earth[682], must be attributed in the first instance to the influence of Gnostic converts. Renan is doubtless right when he says that it was over the bridge between Paganism and Christianity formed by Gnosticism that many Pagan practices poured into the Church[683].

Apart from these external matters, on the other hand, the outbreak of Gnosticism possibly rendered a real service to Christianity. To the simple chiliastic faith of Apostolic times, the Gnostics added the elements which transformed it into a world-religion, fitted to triumph over all the older creeds and worships; and their stealthy and in part secret opposition forced the Church to adopt the organization which has enabled her to survive in unimpaired strength to the present day. Jewish Christianity, the religion of the few pious and humble souls who thought they had nothing to do but to wait in prayer and hope for their Risen Lord, had proved itself unable to conquer the world, and its adherents under the name of Ebionites were already looked upon by the Gentile converts as heretics. Gnosticism, so long as it was unchecked, was a real danger to the Church, but without it Christendom would probably have broken up into hundreds of small independent communities, and would thus have dissipated the strength which she eventually found in unity. Threatened on the one hand by this danger, and on the other with the loss of popular favour which the attractions of Gnosticism made probable, the Church was forced to organize herself, to define her doctrines, to establish a regular and watchful hierarchy[684], and to strictly regulate the tendency to mystic speculation and arbitrary exegesis which she could not wholly suppress. Yet these measures could not come into operation without producing a reaction, the end of which we have yet to see.

Footnote 459:

The chapter on Marcion and his doctrines should perhaps in strict chronological order follow on here, as Marcion’s teaching was either contemporary with, or at most, but a few years later than, that of Valentinus. Cf. Salmon in Dict. Christian Biog. s.v. Marcion, Valentinus. But the earliest documents in the Pistis Sophia are, as will be seen, possibly by Valentinus himself, and, as all of them are closely connected with his doctrine, it seemed a pity to postpone their consideration.

Footnote 460:

W. E. Crum, Catalogue of the Coptic MS. in the Brit. Mus., 1905, p. 173, n. 2, says that it was bought at the sale of Askew’s effects for £10. 10_s._ 0_d._, and that Askew himself bought it from a bookseller.

Footnote 461:

H. Hyvernat, Album de Paléographie Copte, Paris, 1888.

Footnote 462:

Matter, Hist. du Gnost. t. II. pp. 39-43, 347-348, and t. III. pp. 368-371.

Footnote 463:

See the present writer’s article “Some Heretic Gospels” in the Scottish Review for July, 1893, where the MSS. treated of in this chapter and their divisions are described in detail. Schmidt, Koptisch-gnostische Schriften, Bd I. p. 14, speaks of this “Codex Askewianus” as “eine Miszellenhandschrift.”

Footnote 464:

Except where otherwise specified, subsequent references here to Pistis Sophia (in Italics) are to the first 253 pages of the Coptic MS. only.

Footnote 465:

Cf. the ἐσώτερον τοῦ καταπετάσματος “within the veil” of Heb. vi. 19. For other instances of its use in this sense see Crum, Cat. of the Coptic MSS. in the Brit. Mus. p. 255, n. 1; and Clem. Alex. Strom. Bk V. c. 6. For the dove, Mr F. C. Conybeare, in a paper on the subject read before the Society of Historical Theology in Dec. 1892 (see Academy of 3rd Dec. 1892), said that the dove was “the recognised symbol of the Holy Spirit or Logos in the allegorizing theology of the Alexandrine Jews at the beginning of the 1st century A.D.,” and quoted several passages from Philo in support. Cf. Origen, cont. Cels. Bk I. c. 31. But it was also the emblem, perhaps the totem-animal, of the great Asiatic goddess who, under the name of Astarte or Aphrodite, was worshipped as the Mater viventium or “Mother of all Living,” with whose worship the serpent was also connected. It was doubtless to this that the text “Be ye wise as serpents, harmless as doves” refers. Both serpents and doves figure largely in the Mycenaean and Cretan worship of the goddess. See Ronald Burrows, Discoveries in Crete, 1907, pp. 137, 138, and Index for references. In later Greek symbolism the dove was sacred to the infernal Aphrodite or Persephone whose name of Φερρεφάττα or Φερσεφάττα has been rendered “she who bears the dove.” See de Chanot, “Statues Iconiques de Chypre” in Gazette Archéologique, 1878, p. 109.

Footnote 466:

Pistis Sophia, p. 152, Copt. This metaphor is first met with in Philo, Quaest. in Genesim, Bk I. c. 53, who declares that the “coats of skin” of Gen. iii, 21 are the natural bodies with which the souls of the protoplasts were clothed. It was a favourite figure of speech with the Alexandrian Jewish writers. So in the Ascensio Isaiae, c. IV. 16, 17: “But the saints will come with the Lord with their garments which are now stored up on high in the seventh heaven: with the Lord will they come, whose spirits are clothed.... And afterwards they will turn themselves upward in their garments, and their body will be left in this world.” Cf. Charles, Ascension of Isaiah, pp. 34, 35, and Eschatology (Jowett Lectures), pp. 399 sqq., where he says that this was also the teaching of St Paul.

Footnote 467:

The word Σωτήρ, which here as elsewhere in the book appears without any Coptic equivalent, evidently had a peculiar signification to the Valentinian Gnostics. Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 1, § 1, p. 12, Harvey, says that it was the name they gave to Jesus oὐδὲ γὰρ κύριον ὀνομάζειν αὐτὸν θέλουσι “for they do not choose to call Him Lord.” In the later part of the book, the document called Mέρoς τευχῶν Σωτῆρος (p. 253, Copt.) says that “he is saviour and ὰχώρητος (i.e. not to be confined in space), who finds the words of the mysteries and the words of the Third Receptacle which is within (i.e. the inmost of the three) and excelleth them all.” From which it would appear that the chief qualification of a saviour in the eyes of the later Valentinians was that he was not restricted to his special place in the universe, but could visit at will the worlds below him. We seem therefore to be already getting near the Manichaean idea of Burkhans (messengers or Buddhas) who are sent into the world for its salvation. Cf. Chapter XIII infra.

Footnote 468:

So that Judas Iscariot received a super-excellent soul as well as the other eleven, unless we are to suppose that his successor and substitute Matthias was one of those chosen from the beginning. It is curious that neither in this nor in any other Valentinian document is there any allusion to the treason of Judas. The phrase “Archons of the aeons” means, as will be seen later, the rulers of the twelve signs of the Zodiac.

Footnote 469:

The “Sphere,” here as elsewhere in the book, means the sphere of the visible firmament, which is below that of Heimarmene or Destiny.

Footnote 470:

Τhis παρθένος τοῦ φωτός or Virgin of Light appears here, I think, for the first time in any Gnostic document, although she may have been known to the Valentinians. See Irenaeus, Bk II. c. 47, § 2, p. 368, Harvey. She is, perhaps, a lower analogue of Sophia Without, and is represented as seated in or near the material sun which is said to give its light in its “true form” only in her τόπος or place, which is 10,000 times more luminous than that of the Great Propator or Forefather mentioned later (Pistis Sophia, p. 194, Copt.). Her function seems to be the “judging” of the souls of the dead, which does not apparently involve any weighing of evidence, but merely the examination of them to see what “mysteries” they have received in previous incarnations, which will determine the bodies in which they are reincarnated or their translation to higher spheres (ibid. pp. 239, 292). She also places in the soul a power which returns to her, according to the Μέρος τευχῶν Σωτῆρος, on the death of its possessor (ibid. p. 284, Copt.), thereby discharging the functions assigned in the last book of Plato’s Republic to Lachesis. She is also on the same authority (i.e. the Μ. τ. Σ.) one of the rulers of the disk of the sun and of that of the moon (ibid. pp. 340-341, Copt.), and her place is one of the “places of the Middle” and is opposite to the kingdom of Adamas, which is called the “head of the aeons” (ibid. p. 236, Copt.). She reappears in Manichaeism and it is said in the Acta Archelai that at the destruction of the world she will pass into “the ship” of the moon along with Jesus and other powers where she will remain until the whole earth is burnt up (c. XIII. p. 21 of Hegemonius, Acta Archelai, Beeson’s ed., Leipzig, 1906, p. 21). In the Turfan texts (F. W. K. Müller, Handschriften-Reste in Estrangelo Schrift aus Turfan, III. Teil, Berlin, 1904, p. 77) appears a fragment of a prayer in which is invoked yîšô kanîgrôšanâ which Dr Müller translates Ἰησοῦς παρθένος τοῦ φωτός, “Jesus, Virgin of Light”; but it is possible that there is some mistake in the reading.

Footnote 471:

Barbelo is a name very frequently met with in the earlier heresiologists. Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 26, §§ 1, 2, pp. 221-226, Harvey, declares that there was a sect of Simonians called Barbeliotae “or Naassenes” who suppose “a certain indestructible (the Latin version says ‘never-ageing’) Aeon in a living virgin spirit whom they call Barbelo (masc.),” and gives an account of a string of other aeons issuing not from, but at the prayer of, this Barbelo, which is far from clear in the present state of the text. The sect appears, from what can be made out of his description, to have resembled the Ophites, of which it may have been a branch. Hippolytus, however, says nothing of them, and the account of Epiphanius (Haer. XXV. and XXVI., Vol. II, pt 1, pp. 160, 184), Oehler, is untrustworthy, inasmuch as he assigns the worship of Barbelo to two sects, one of which he calls Nicolaitans and the other Gnostics simply. To both of them he attributes after his manner unimaginably filthy rites, and it is plain from his making Barbelo the mother of Jaldabaoth and giving her a seat in the eighth heaven that he confuses her wilfully or otherwise with the Sophia of the Ophites. Her place in the system of the Pistis Sophia will be described in the text. The name is said by Harvey to be derived from the Syriac Barba elo, the Deity in Four or God in Tetrad, and the derivation is approved by Hort (Dict. of Christian Biog. s.h.n.). It appears more likely, however, that it is to be referred to the Hebrew root בבל “Babel” or confusion, a derivation which Hort also mentions. In Irenaeus’ Greek text the name is spelt βαρβηλὼ, in the Latin “Barbelo” with an accusative “Barbelon,” and in Epiphanius βαρβηλὼ and βαρβήρω. If we might alter this last into βαρβαριωθ, we might see it in a great: number of magic spells of the period. Cf. Wessely, Ephesia Grammata, Wien, 1886, pp. 26, 28, 33, 34.

Footnote 472:

Pistis Sophia, p. 16, Copt. The five words are zama, zama, ôzza, rachama, ôzai. Whatever they may mean, we may be quite sure that they can never contain with their few letters the three pages or so of text which are given as their interpretation. It is possible that the letters are used acrostically like the A G L A, i.e. ניבר לעולם אדני (? Ahih ? אהיה) אתה Ate Gibor Lailam Adonai, “The mighty Adonai for ever” (or “thou art the mighty and eternal Lord”) commonly met with in mediaeval magic. Cf. Peter de Abano, Heptameron, seu Elementa Magica, Paris, 1567, p. 563; or, for other examples, F. Barrett, The Magus, 1801, Bk II. pp. 39, 40. The notable feature in these mysterious words is the quantity of Zetas or ζ’s that they contain which points to the use of some sort of table like that called by Cabalists ziruph, or a cryptogram of the aaaaa, aaaab, kind. It should be noticed that Coptic scribes were often afflicted with what has been called Betacism or the avoidance of the letter Beta or β by every means, which frequently led to the substitution for it of ζ as in the case of Jaldabaoth = Ιαλδαζαω given above (Chap. VIII, n. 3, p. 46 supra).

Footnote 473:

This idea of certain powers being the members or “limbs” of him from whom they issue recurs all through the Pistis Sophia. Cf. especially p. 224, Copt., where it is said that the χωρήματα or “receptacles” of the Ineffable go forth from his last limb. It is probably to be referred to the conception of the Supreme Being as the Man κατ’ ἐξοχήν, which we have seen current among the Ophites. See Chap. VIII, n. 2, p. 38 supra. That the ancient Egyptians used the same expression concerning their own gods and especially Ra, see Moret, “Le Verbe créateur et révélateur,” R.H.R., Mai-Juin, 1909, p. 257. Cf. Amélineau, Gnosticisme Égyptien, p. 288. So Naville, Old Egyptian Faith, p. 227.

Footnote 474:

That is to say, their names make up his name as letters do a word. So in the system of Marcus referred to in Chap. IX supra, Irenaeus (Bk I. c. 8, § 11, p. 146, Harvey) explains that the name of Jesus (Ἰησοῦς) which might be uttered is composed of six letters, but His unutterable name of twenty-four, because the names of the first Tetrad of Ἄρρητος (Bythos), Σιγή, Πατὴρ (Monogenes or Nous) and Ἀλήθεια contain that number of letters. See also § 5 of same chapter. Those who wish to understand the system are recommended to read the whole of the chapter quoted. As Irenaeus has the sense to see, there is no reason why the construction from one root of names founded on the principle given should not go on for ever.

Footnote 475:

This is probably either the Horos or Stauros that we have seen brought into being in the teaching of Valentinus as a guard to the Pleroma, or, as is more probable, an antitype of the same power in the world immediately above ours. That there was more than one Horos according to the later Valentinians appears plain from the words of Irenaeus above quoted (see Chap. IX, n. 1, p. 105 supra). Probably each world had its Horos, or Limit, who acted as guard to it on its completion. That in this world, the Cross, personified and made pre-existent, fulfils this office seems evident from the Gospel of Peter, where it is described as coming forth from the Sepulchre with Jesus (Mem. Miss. Archéol. du Caire, 1892, t. IX. fasc. 1, v. 10). Cf. too, Clem. Alex. Paedagogus, Bk III. c. 12, and Strom. Bk II. c. 20.

Footnote 476:

Ὁ μηνευτος. The word is not known in classical Greek (but cf. μηνυτής “a revealer”), and appears to have its root in μήν “the moon,” as the measure of the month. From the Coptic word here translated “Precept,” we may guess it to be a personification of the Jewish Law or Torah which, according to the Rabbis, before the creation of the world existed in the heavens. Later in the book it is said that it is by command of this power that Jeû places the aeons (p. 26, Copt.); that the souls of those who receive the mysteries of the light (i.e. the psychics) will have precedence in beatitude over those who belong to the places of the First Precept (p. 196, Copt.); that all the orders of beings of the Third χὠρημα are below him (p. 203, Copt.); and that he is “cut into seven mysteries,” which may mean that his name is spelled with seven letters (p. 219, Copt.).

Footnote 477:

Χάραγμαι. Are these the letters mentioned in last note?

Footnote 478:

Πρεσβευτής, properly, “ambassador” or “agent.” Doubtless a prototype of our sun. Elsewhere in the book, Jesus tells His disciples that He brought forth from Himself “at the beginning” power (not a power), which He cast into the First Precept, “and the First Precept cast part of it into the Great Light, and the Great Light cast part of that which he received into the Five Parastatae, the last of whom breathed part of that which he received into the Kerasmos or Confusion” (p. 14, Copt.). The Great Light is also called the Χάραγμα of the Light, and is said to have remained without emanation (p. 219, Copt.).

Footnote 479:

Παραστάται, “Comrades” or “witnesses” or “helpers.” They can here hardly be anything else but the Five Planets. It is said later that it was the last Parastates who set Jeû and his five companions in the “Place of the Right Hand” (p. 193, Copt.). When the world is destroyed, Jesus is to take the perfect souls into this last Parastates where they are to reign with him (p. 230, Copt.) for 1000 years of light which are 365,000 of our years (p. 243, Copt.). Προηγούμενος “Forerunner” does not seem to occur in classical Greek.

Footnote 480:

We hear nothing more definite of these Five Trees, but they appear again in Manichaeism, and are mentioned in the Chinese treatise from Tun-huang, for which see Chap. XIII infra.

Footnote 481:

This is a most puzzling expression and seems to have baffled the scribe, as he speaks of them, when he comes to repeat the phrase (p. 216, Copt.), as the “Twin Saviours,” which is a classical epithet of the Dioscuri. In Pharaonic Egypt, Shu and Tefnut the pair of gods who were first brought into being by the Creator were sometimes called “The Twins.” See Naville, Old Egyptian Faith, p. 120. Cf. p. 171 infra.

Footnote 482:

It is evident from the context that we here begin the enumeration of the Powers of the Left, who are hylic or material and therefore the least worthy of the inhabitants of the heavens. According to Irenaeus, the Valentinians held that all of them were doomed to destruction. Τριῶν ὠν ὄντων, τὸ μὲν ὑλικὸν, ὃ καὶ ἀριστερὸν καλοῦσι, κατὰ ἀνάγκην ἀπὸλλυσθαι λέγουσιν, ἅτε μηδεμίαν ἐπιδέξασθαι πνοὴν ἀφθαρσίας δυνάμενον (Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 1, § 11, p. 51, Harvey). “There being three forms of existences, they say that the hylic, which they call the left hand, must be destroyed, inasmuch as it cannot receive any breath of incorruption.” So in the Bruce Papyrus to be presently mentioned, the “part of the left” is called the land of Death. At their head stands “the Great Unseen Propator,” who throughout the Pistis Sophia proper is called by this title only, and occupies the same place with regard to the left that Iao does in respect of the middle, and Jeû of the right. In the Μέρος τευχῶν Σωτῆρος (p. 359, Copt.) he is called by the name ἀγραμμαχαμαρεχ which frequently appears in the Magic Papyri. It is there spelt indifferently ακραμνικαμαρι, ακραμμαχαρι, ακραμμαχαμαρει, ακραμμαχαχαχαρι, and in a Latin inscription on a gold plate, acramihamari (see Wessely, Ephesia Grammata, p. 22, for references), which last may be taken to be the more usual pronunciation. One is rather tempted to see in the name a corruption of ἀγραμματέον in the sense of “which cannot be written,” but I can find no authority for such a use of the word. As the ruler of the material Cosmos he might be taken for the Cosmocrator who, as we have seen, is called by Valentinus Diabolos or the Devil (but see n. 1, p. 152 infra). Yet he cannot be wholly evil like Beelzebuth for it is said in the text (p. 41, Copt.) that he and his consort Barbelo sing praises to the Powers of the Light. So in the Μέρος τευχῶν Σωτῆρος (p. 378, Copt.) he is represented as begging for purification and holiness when the Great Name of God is uttered. It is plain also from the statements in the text (pp. 43, 44, Copt.) that in the Pistis Sophia he, Barbelo, and the Αὐθάδης or Arrogant Power make up a triad called the great τριδυναμεῖς or “Triple Powers” from whom are projected the powers called the “Twenty-four Invisibles.” In another document of the same MS. (p. 361, Copt.) a power from him is said to be bound in the planet Saturn.

Footnote 483:

This Εἱμαρμένη or “Destiny” is the sphere immediately above our firmament. It is evidently so called, because on passing through it the soul on its way to incarnation receives the Moira or impress of its own destiny, of which it cannot afterwards rid itself except by the grace of the mysteries or Valentinian sacraments. Cf. Chap. IX, n. 3, p. 115 supra.

Footnote 484:

Ἄρρητος. Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 5, § 1, p. 99, Harvey. Innominabilis, Tertullian, adv. Valentinianos, c. 37. So Clem. Alex. Strom. Bk V. c. 10, says that God is ineffable, being incapable of being expressed even in His own power.

Footnote 485:

Χωρηματα: τόποι.

Footnote 486:

That [i.e. the First] mystery knoweth why there emanated all the places which are in the receptacle of the Ineffable One and also all which is in them, and why they went forth from the last limb of the Ineffable One.... These things I will tell you in the emanation of the universe. Pist. Soph. p. 225, Copt.

Footnote 487:

Ibid. p. 222, Copt.

Footnote 488:

Ibid. p. 127, Copt.

Footnote 489:

See Chap. IX, pp. 121, 122 supra.

Footnote 490:

Heb. vi. 19.

Footnote 491:

p. 203, Copt. Why there should be 24, when the dodecad or group of Aeons in the world above was only 12, it is difficult to say. But Hippolytus supplies a sort of explanation when he says (op. cit. Bk VI. c. 33, p. 292, Cruice): Ταῦτά ἐστιν ἃ λέγουσιν· ἔτι [δὲ] πρὸς τούτοις, ἀριθμητικὴν ποιούμενοι τὴν πᾶσαν αὐτῶν διδασκαλίαν, ὡς προεῖπον [τοὺς] ἐντὸς Πληρώματος Αἰῶνας τριάκοντα πάλιν ἐπιπροβεβληκέναι αὐτοῖς κατὰ ἀναλογίαν Αἰῶνας ἄλλους, ἵν’ ᾖ τὸ Πλήρωμα ἐν ἀριθμῷ τελείῳ συνηθροισμένον. Ὡς γὰρ οἱ Πυθαγορικοὶ διεῖλον εἰς δώδεκα καὶ τριάκοντα καὶ ἑξήκοντα, καὶ λεπτὰ λεπτῶν εἰσὶν ἐκείνοις, δεδήλωται· οὕτως οὗ τοι τὰ ἐντὸς Πληρώματος ὑποδιαιροῦσιν. “This is what they say. But besides this, they make their whole teaching arithmetical, since they say that the thirty Aeons within the Pleroma again projected by analogy other Aeons, so that thereby the Pleroma may be gathered together in a perfect number. For the manner in which the Pythagoreans divide [the cosmos] into 12, 30, and 60 parts, and each of these into yet more minute ones, has been made plain” [see op. cit. Bk VI. c. 28, p. 279, where Hippolytus tells us how Pythagoras divided each Sign of the Zodiac into 30 parts “which are days of the month, these last into 60 λεπτὰ, and so on”]. “In this way do they [the Valentinians] divide the things within the Pleroma.” Cf. Μέρος τευχῶν Σωτῆρος p. 364, Copt. In another book of the Philosophumena (Bk IV. c. 7 Περὶ τῆς ἀριθμετικῆς τέχνης) he explains how the Pythagoreans derived infinity from a single principle by a succession of odd and even or male and female numbers, in connection with which he quotes Simon Magus (op. cit. p. 132, Cruice). The way this was applied to names he shows in the chapter Περὶ μαθηματικῶν (op. cit. Βk IV. c. 11, pp. 77 sqq., Cruice) which is in fact a description of what in the Middle Ages was called Arithmomancy, or divination by numbers.

Footnote 492:

p. 224, Copt. See also p. 241, Copt.—a very curious passage where the Ineffable One is called “the God of Truth without foot” (cf. Osiris as a mummy) and is said to live apart from his “members.”

Footnote 493:

In the beginning of the Μέρος τευχῶν Σωτῆρος (p. 252, Copt.) it is said of the Ineffable that “there are many members, but one body.” But this statement is immediately followed by another that this is only said “as a pattern (παράδειγμα) and a likeness and a resemblance, but not in truth of shape” (p. 253, Copt.).

Footnote 494:

What he does say is that the Ineffable One has two χωρήματα or receptacles and that the second of these is the χώρημα of the First Mystery. It is, I think, probable that an attempt to describe both these χωρήματα is made in one of the documents of the Bruce Papyrus. See pp. 191, 192 infra.

Footnote 495:

In addition to the enumeration contained in the so-called interpretation of the mysterious “Five Words,” there appears in the 2nd part of the Pistis Sophia (pp. 206 sqq. Copt.) a long rhapsody in which it is declared that a certain mystery knows why all the powers, stars, and heavenly “places” were made. These are here again set out seriatim, and as the order in the main corresponds with that in the five words translated in the text, it serves as a check upon this last. The order of the powers in the text was given in the article in the Scottish Review before referred to, and, although this was written 20 years ago, I see no occasion to alter it.

Footnote 496:

It is the “last Parastates” who places Jeû and his companion in “the place of those who belong to the right hand according to the arrangement (i.e. οἰκονομία) of the Assembly of the Light which is in the Height of the Rulers of the Aeons and in the universes (κοσμοὶ) and every race which is therein” (p. 193, Copt.). A later revelation is promised as to these, but in the meantime it is said that Jeû emanated from the chosen or pure (εἰλικρινής) light of the first of the Five Trees (loc. cit.).

Footnote 497:

See nn. 1 and 3, p. 141 supra. As has been said, it is difficult not to see in this “1st Precept” a personification of the Torah or Jewish Law.

Footnote 498:

See n. 3, p. 146 supra.

Footnote 499:

See n. 2, p. 136 supra.

Footnote 500:

So Secundus, Valentinus’ follower, taught according to Hippolytus (v. Chap. ΙΧ supra) “that there is a right and a left tetrad, i.e. light and darkness.” This may be taken to mean that the constitution of the light-world was repeated point for point in the world of darkness. The middle world is of course that where light and darkness mingle.

Footnote 501:

Jeû is generally called the ἐπίσκοπος or overseer of the Light. He it is who has placed the Rulers of the Aeons so that they always “behold the left” (p. 26, Copt.). He is also said to have bound “in the beginning” the rulers of the Aeons and of Destiny and of the Sphere in their respective places (p. 34, Copt.), and that each and every of them will remain in the τάξις or order and walk in the δρόμος or course in which he placed them. We also hear in the Pistis Sophia proper of two “books of Jeû” “which Enoch wrote when the First Mystery spoke with him out of the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge in the Paradise of Adam” (p. 246, Copt.). In the first part of the Μέρος τευχῶν Σωτῆρος, however Jeû is described as “the First Man, the ἐπίσκοπος of the Light, and the πρεσβευτής or Ambassador of the First Precept” (p. 322, Copt.); and it is further said in the same book that “the Book of Jeû (not books) which Enoch wrote in Paradise when I (Jesus) spoke with him out of the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge” was placed by His means in “the rock Ararad.” Jesus goes on to say that He placed “Kalapataurôth the ruler who is over Skemmut in which is the foot of Jeû, and he surrounds all rulers and destinies—I placed that ruler to guard the books of Jeû from the Flood and lest any of the rulers should destroy them out of envy” (p. 354, Copt.).

Footnote 502:

Melchizidek is very seldom mentioned in the Pistis Sophia, but when he is, it is always as the great παραλήμπτωρ or “inheritor” of the Light (p. 34, Copt.). Jesus describes how he comes among the Rulers of the Aeons at certain times and takes away their light, which he purifies (p. 35, Copt.). He is said to have emanated from the light of the 5th Tree of the Treasure House, as Jeû did from that of the 1st (p. 193, Copt.). In the Μέρος τευχῶν Σωτῆρος, he is called the great παραλημπτής or “receiver” of the Light (p. 292, Copt.). In the 2nd part of the last named document he is called Zorocothora Melchizidek, an epithet which C. W. King in The Gnostics and their Remains translates “light-gatherer.” It is also said in the same 2nd part that “he and Jeû are the two great lights,” and that he is the πρεσβευτής or “Legate” of all the lights which are purified in the Rulers of the Aeons (p. 365, Copt.). We may perhaps see in him and Jeû the antitypes of which the Great Light and the First Precept are the paradigms. Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk VII. c. 36, p. 391, Cruice, says that there was a sect, the followers of one Theodotus, a τραπεζίτης or money-changer, who said that there was “a greatest power named Melchizidek who was greater than Christ.” Pseudo-Tertullian repeats the same story and adds that Melchizidek is “a celestial virtue of great grace,” who does for heavenly angels and virtues what Christ does for men, having made himself “their intercessor and advocate.” See auct. cit. (probably Victorinus of Pettau) Against all Heresies, c. XXIV. p. 279, Oehl. He doubtless founded his opinion on the passage in the Hebrews. The name seems to mean “Holy King” Cf. the “King of Glory” of the Manichaeans, see Chap. XIII infra.

Footnote 503:

p. 35, Copt.

Footnote 504:

He is said to have emanated from the 2nd Tree (p. 193, Copt.) and is nowhere distinctly named. But one may perhaps guess from the order in which he occurs in the 2nd part of the Μέρος τευχῶν Σωτῆρος that his name was Zarazaz, evidently a cryptogram like those mentioned in n. 1, p. 139 supra. It is also said that the Rulers call him “Maskelli after the name of a strong (i.e. male) ruler of their own place (p. 370, Copt.).” This name of Maskelli, sometimes written Maskelli-maskellô, is frequently met with in the Magic Papyri. Cf. Wessely, Ephesia Grammata, p. 28.

Footnote 505:

They are said to have emanated from the 3rd and 4th Tree respectively (p. 193, Copt.).

Footnote 506:

p. 193, Copt. He is evidently called the Good because there is a wicked Sabaoth sometimes called Sabaoth Adamas, and the Great because there is a Little Sabaoth the Good who seems to act as his messenger. It is this last who takes the power from the Great Sabaoth the Good which afterwards becomes the body of Jesus and “casts it into matter and Barbelo” (p. 127, Copt.). He seems to be set over or in some way identified with what is called the Gate of Life (p. 215, Copt.) both in the Pistis Sophia and the Μέρος τευχῶν Σωτῆρος (p. 292, Copt.).

Footnote 507:

p. 12, Copt., where he is oddly enough called the Little Iao the Good, I think by a clerical error. Later he is said to be “the great leader of the middle whom the Rulers call the Great Iao after the name of a great ruler in their own place” (p. 194, Copt.). He is described in the same way in the second part of the Μέρος τευχῶν Σωτῆρος (p. 371, Copt.).

Footnote 508:

See last note.

Footnote 509:

p. 12, Copt. This “power” is evidently the better part of man’s soul like the Logoi who dwell therein in the passage quoted above from Valentinus, see Chap. IX, p. 112 supra.

Footnote 510:

p. 194, Copt.

Footnote 511:

See n. 3, p. 137 supra.

Footnote 512:

So the Μέρος τευχῶν Σωτῆρος (p. 321, Copt.).

Footnote 513:

The likeness of Mary the Mother and Mary Magdalene to the seven Virgins appears in the translation of Amélineau (Pistis Sophia, Paris, 1895, p. 60). Schwartze (p. 75, Lat.) puts it rather differently. See also Schmidt, K.-G.S. bd. 1, p. 75. The “receivers” of the Virgin of Light are mentioned on p. 292, Copt.

Footnote 514:

p. 184, Copt.

Footnote 515:

pp. 340, 341, Copt. As ⲒⲞϨ (ioh) is Coptic for the Moon, it is just possible that there may be a kind of pun here on this word and the name Iao. Osiris, whose name was often equated by the Alexandrian Jews with their own divine name Jaho or Jah, as in the Manethonian story of Osarsiph = Joseph, was also considered a Moon-god. Cf. the “Hymn of the Mysteries” given in Chap. VIII, where he is called “the holy horned moon of heaven.”

Footnote 516:

See note 1, p. 138 supra. The Bruce Papyrus (Amélineau, Notice sur le Papyrus Gnostique Bruce, Paris, 1882, p. 220) speaks of the “Thirteenth Aeon, where are the Great Unseen God and the Great Virgin of the Spirit (cf. the παρθενική πνεῦμα of Irenaeus) and the twenty-four emanations of the unseen God.”

Footnote 517:

See n. 2, p. 142 supra.

Footnote 518:

See Chapter IX, p. 104 supra.

Footnote 519:

p. 116, Copt.

Footnote 520:

I suppose it is in view of this maternal aspect of her nature that she is alluded to in the latter part of the Μέρος τευχῶν Σωτῆρος as βαρβηλω βδελλη “Barbelo who gives suck”? Her place, according to the Bruce Papyrus (Amélineau, p. 218), is said to be in the Twelfth Aeon.

Footnote 521:

There have been many attempts to make this name mean something else than merely “Faith-Wisdom.” Dulaurier and Renan both tried to read it “πιστὴ Σοφία” “the faithful Wisdom” or “La fidèle Sagesse.” If we had more documents of the style of Simon’s Apophasis, we should probably find that this apposition of two or more nouns in a name was not infrequent, and the case of Ptah-Sokar-Osiris will occur to every Egyptologist. The fact that the name includes the first and last female member of the Dodecad of Valentinus (see p. 101 supra) is really its most plausible explanation.

Footnote 522:

This Adamas seems to be an essentially evil power, who wages useless war against the Light on the entry of Jesus into his realm (p. 25, Copt.). His seat is plainly the Twelve Aeons or Zodiac (p. 157, Copt.), and it is said in the Μέρος τευχῶν Σωτῆρος that his “kingdom” is in the τοποι κεφαλης αἰωνων or Places of the head of the Aeons and is opposite the place of the Virgin of Light (p. 336, Copt.). In the second part of the same document (i.e. the μ. τ. σ.) it is said that the rulers of Adamas rebelled, persisting in the act of copulation (συνουσία) and begetting “Rulers and Archangels and Angels and Ministers (λειτουργοί) and Decans” (Δεκανοί), and that thereupon Jeû went forth from the Place of the Right and “bound them in Heimarmene and the Sphere.” We further learn that half the Aeons headed by Jabraoth, who is also once mentioned in the Pistis Sophia proper (p. 128, Copt., and again in the Bruce Papyrus, Amélineau, p. 239), were consequently transferred to another place, while Adamas, now for the first time called Sabaoth Adamas, with the unrepentant rulers are confined in the Sphere to the number of 1800, over whom 360 other rulers bear sway, over whom again are set the five planets Saturn, Mars, Mercury, Venus, and Jupiter (pp. 360, 361, Copt.). All this seems to me to be later than the Pistis Sophia proper, to have been written at a time when belief in astrology was more rife than in Hadrian’s reign, and to owe something to Manichaean influence. The original Adamas, the persecutor of Pistis Sophia herself, seems identifiable with the Diabolos or Cosmocrator of Valentinus, in which case we may perhaps see in the “Great Propator” a merely stupid and ignorant power like the Jaldabaoth of the Ophites and their successors. See p. 163 infra.

Footnote 523:

p. 145, Copt. So Irenaeus in his account of the Valentinian doctrines, Bk I. c. 1, p. 12 sqq. I suppose there is an allusion to this in the remark of Jesus to Mary that a year is as a day (p. 243, Copt.). But all the astrology of the time seems to have divided the astronomical day not into 24, but into 12 hours. It was the same with the Manichaeans. See Chavannes and Pelliot, “Un Traité manichéen retrouvé en Chine,” Journal Asiatique, série X, t. XVIII. (Nov.-Dec. 1911), p. 540, n. 4.

Footnote 524:

But curiously enough, not the “souls” of fish. So in the Middle Ages, the Manichaeans of Languedoc did not allow their “Perfects” to partake of animal food nor even of eggs, but allowed them fish, because they said these creatures were not begotten by copulation. See Schmidt, Hist. des Cathares, Paris, 1843. Is this one of the reasons why Jesus is called Ἰχθύς?

Footnote 525:

This idea of man being made from the tears of the eyes of the heavenly powers is an old one in Egypt. So Maspero explains the well-known sign of the utchat or Eye of Horus as that “qui exprime la matière, le corps du soleil, d’où tous les êtres découlent sous forme de pleurs,” “Les Hypogées Royaux de Thébes,” Ét. Égyptol. II. p. 130. Moret, “Le verbe créateur et révélateur en Égypte,” R. H. R. Mai-Juin, 1909, p. 386, gives many instances from hymns and other ritual documents. It was known to Proclus who transfers it after his manner to Orpheus and makes it into hexameters:

Thy tears are the much-enduring race of men, By thy laugh thou hast raised up the sacred race of gods.

See Abel’s Orphica, fr. 236.

Footnote 526:

See n. 1, p. 148 supra.

Footnote 527:

This is, perhaps, to be gathered from the Pistis Sophia, p. 36, Copt. Cf. Μέρος τευχῶν Σωτῆρος, pp. 337-338. In another part of the last-named document, the Moon-ship is described as steered by a male and female dragon (the caduceus of Hermes?) who snatch away the light of the Rulers (p. 360, Copt.).

Footnote 528:

This seems to be the passage referred to later by Origen. See n. 2, p. 159 infra.

Footnote 529:

The usual epithet or appellation of Osiris Neb-er-tcher = Lord of Totality or the Universe. Cf. Budge, Book of the Dead, passim.

Footnote 530:

So in the Ascensio Isaiae, of which Mr Charles says that “we cannot be sure that it existed earlier than the latter half of the 2nd century of our Era,” it is said (Chap. IX, v. 15) “And thus His descent, as you will see, will be hidden even from the heavens, so that it will not be known who He is.” Charles, The Ascension of Isaiah, p. 62. Cf. ibid. pp. 67, 70, 73 and 79.

Footnote 531:

pp. 39, 40, Copt. The reference is apparently to the Book of Enoch, c. LXXX. (see Charles, Book of Enoch, pp. 212, 213, and the Epistle of Barnabas, N.T. extra can., c. IV. p. 9, Hilgenfeld). In the Latin version of the last-quoted book, it is assigned to Daniel, which shows perhaps the connection of Enoch with all this quasi-prophetic or apocalyptic literature.

Footnote 532:

According to the Valentinian system, his name was Θελητὸς or “the Beloved.” See Chap. IX, p. 101 supra.

Footnote 533:

See Chap. VIII supra. Here he occupies a far inferior position to that assigned him by the Ophites. In the Μέρος τευχῶν Σωτῆρος he sinks lower still and becomes merely one of the torturers in hell (p. 382, Copt., κ.τ.λ.). Thus, as is usual in matters of religion, the gods of one age become the fiends of the next. In the Bruce Papyrus (Amélineau, p. 212) he appears as one of the chiefs of the Third Aeon. It is curious, however, to observe how familiar the name must have been to what Origen calls “a certain secret theology,” so that it was necessary to give him some place in every system of Gnosticism. His bipartite appearance may be taken from Ezekiel viii. 2.

Footnote 534:

Probably the latter. See what is said about the Outer Darkness in the Μέρος τευχῶν Σωτῆρος, p. 319, Copt. where it is described as “a great dragon whose tail is in his mouth who is without the whole κόσμος and surrounds it.”

Footnote 535:

p. 83, Copt. So in the Manichaean legend, the First Man, on being taken captive by Satan, prays seven times to the Light and is delivered from the Darkness in which he is imprisoned. See Chap. XIII infra.

Footnote 536:

This demon in the shape of a flying arrow seems to be well known in Rabbinic lore. Mr Whinfield in J.R.A.S., April, 1910, pp. 485, 486, describes him as having a head like a calf, with one horn rising out of his forehead like a cruse or pitcher, while to look upon him is certain death to man or beast. His authority seems to be Rapaport’s Tales from the Midrash.

Footnote 537:

The basilisk with seven heads seems to be Death. See Gaster, “The Apocalypse of Abraham,” T.S.B.A. vol. IX. pt 1, p. 222, where this is said to be the “true shape” of death. Cf. Kohler, “Pre-Talmudic Haggadah,” J.Q.R., 1895, p. 590. Death, as we have seen in Chap. IX, p. 107, was in the ideas of Valentinus the creature of the Demiurge. For the dragon, see Whinfield, ubi cit.

Footnote 538:

These “three times” are not years. As the Pistis Sophia opens with the announcement that Jesus spent 12 years on earth after the Resurrection, we may suppose that He was then—if the author accepted the traditional view that He suffered at 33—exactly 45 years old, and the “time” would then be a period of 15 years, as was probably the indiction. The descent of the “two vestures” upon Jesus is said (p. 4, Copt.) to have taken place “on the 15th day of the month Tybi” which is the day Clement of Alexandria (Strom. Bk I. c. 21) gives for the birth of Jesus. He says the followers of Basilides gave the same day as that of His baptism.

Footnote 539:

Epiphanius, Haer. XXVI. t. II. pt 1, p. 181, Oehler.

Footnote 540:

This doctrine of ἑρμηνεία occurs all through the book. The author is trying to make out that well-known passages of both the Old and New Testaments were in fact prophetic utterances showing forth in advance the marvels he narrates. While the Psalms of David quoted by him are Canonical, the Odes of Solomon are the Apocrypha known under that name and quoted by Lactantius (Div. Inst. Bk IV. c. 12). For some time the Pistis Sophia was the only authority for their contents, but in 1909 Dr Rendel Harris found nearly the whole collection in a Syriac MS. of the 16th century. A translation has since been published in Cambridge Texts and Studies, vol. VIII. No. 3, Cambridge, 1912, by the Bishop of Ossory, who shows, as it seems conclusively, that they were the hymns sung by the newly-baptized in the Primitive Church.

Footnote 541:

Astrological doctrine first becomes prominent in Gnostic teaching in the Excerpta Theodoti which we owe to Clement of Alexandria. We may therefore put their date about the year 200. This would be after the time of Valentinus himself, but agrees well with what M. Cumont (Astrology and Religion, pp. 96 sqq.) says as to the great vogue which astrology attained in Rome under the Severi. Its intrusion into the Valentinian doctrines is much more marked in the Μέρος τευχῶν Σωτῆρος than in the Pistis Sophia, and more in the Bruce Papyrus than in either.

Footnote 542:

See Chap. VIII, pp. 73, 74 supra.

Footnote 543:

Origen, cont. Cels. Bk VI. c. 34.

Footnote 544:

Hippolytus (Chap. IX, p. 92), speaks of the Jesus of Valentinus as the Joint Fruit of the Pleroma simply. Irenaeus (Bk I. c. 1, p. 23, Harvey) goes into more detail: Καὶ ὑπὲρ τῆς εὐποιΐας ταύτης βουλῇ μιᾷ καὶ γνώμῃ τὸ πᾶν Πλήρωμα τῶν Αἰώνων, συνευδοκοῦντος τοῦ Χριστοῦ καὶ τοῦ Πνεύματος, τοῦ δὲ Πατρὸς αὐτῶν συνεπισφραγιζομένου, ἕνα ἕκαστον τῶν Αἰώνων, ὅπερ εἶχεν ἐν ἑαυτῷ κάλλιστον καὶ ἀνθηρότατον συνενεγκαμένους καὶ ἐρανισαμένους, καὶ ταῦτα ἁρμοδίως πλέξαντας, καὶ ἐμμελῶς ἑνώσαντας, προβαλέσθαι προβλήματα εἰς τιμὴν καὶ δόξαν τοῦ Βυθοῦ, τελειότατον κάλλος τε καὶ ἄστρον τοῦ Πληρώματος, τέλειον καρπὸν τὸν Ἰησοῦν ὃν καὶ Σωτῆρα προσαγορευθῆναι, καὶ Χριστὸν, καὶ Λόγον πατρωνομικῶς καὶ κατὰ [καὶ τὰ] Πάντα, διὰ τὸ ἀπὸ πάντων εἶναι. “Αnd because of this benefit, with one will and opinion, the whole Pleroma of the Aeons, with the consent of Christos and the Spirit, and their Father having set his seal upon the motion, brought together and combined what each of them had in him which was most beautiful and brightest, and wreathing these fittingly together and properly uniting them, they projected a projection to the honour and glory of Bythos, the most perfect beauty and star of the Pleroma, the perfect Fruit Jesus, who is also called Saviour and Christ, and after his Father Logos, and Pan, because He is from all.” Compare with these the words of Colossians ii. 9: ὅτι ἐν αὐτῷ κατοικεῖ πᾶν τὸ πλήρωμα τῆς θεότητος σωματικῶς. “For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.”

Footnote 545:

That the Valentinians considered the Dodecad (and a fortiori the Decad) as having a collective entity, and as it were a corporate existence, seems plain from what Hippolytus says in narrating the opinions of Marcus: ταῦτα γὰρ δώδεκα ζώδια φανερώτατα τὴν τοῦ Ἀνθρώπου καὶ τῆς Ἐκκλησίας θυγατέρα δωδεκάδα ἀποσκιάζειν λέγουσι. “For they say that these 12 signs of the Zodiac most clearly shadow forth the Dodecad who is the daughter of Anthropos and Ecclesia” (Hipp. op. cit. Bk VI. c. 54, p. 329, Cruice). And again (loc. cit. p. 331, Cruice): ἔτι μὴν καὶ τὴν γῆν εἰς δώδεκα κλίματα διῃρῆσθαι φάσκοντες, καὶ καθ’ ἒν ἕκαστον κλίμα, ἀνὰ μίαν δύναμιν ἐκ τοῦ οὐρανῶν κατὰ κάθετον ὑποδεχομένην, καὶ ὁμοούσια τίκτουσαν τέκνα τῇ καταπεμπούσῃ κατὰ τὴν ἀπόρροιαν δυνάμει, τύπον εἶναι τῆς ἄνω δωδεκάδος. “These are also they who assert that the earth is divided into twelve climates, and receives in each climate one special power from the heavens and produces children resembling the power thus sent down by emanation, being thus a type of the Dodecad above.” The doctrine of correspondences or, as it was called in the Middle Ages, of “signatures” is here most clearly stated. In all this the Valentinian teaching was doubtless under the influence of the ancient Egyptian ideas as to the paut neteru or “company of the gods,” as to which see Maspero’s essay Sur L’Ennéade quoted above.

Footnote 546:

It is said (p. 9, Copt.) that it is by him that the universe was created and that it is he who causes the sun to rise.

Footnote 547:

As has before been said, this is attempted in one of the documents of the Bruce Papyrus. See pp. 191, 192 infra. In the present state of the text this attempt is only difficultly intelligible, and is doubtless both later in date than and the work of an author inferior to that of the Pistis Sophia.

Footnote 548:

p. 16, Copt. Yet the First Mystery is not the creator of Matter which is evil, because Matter does not really exist. See Bruce Papyrus (Amélineau, p. 126) and n. 2, p. 190 infra.

Footnote 549:

As mentioned in the Scottish Review article referred to in n. 1, p. 135 supra, there is no passage but one in the Pistis Sophia which affords any colour for supposing that the author was acquainted with St John’s Gospel. All the quotations set forth by Harnack in his treatise Über das gnostische Buch Pistis-Sophia, Leipzig, 1891, p. 27, on which he relies to prove the converse of this proposition, turn out on analysis to appear also in one or other of the Synoptics, from which the author may well have taken them. The single exception is this (Pistis Sophia, p. 11, Copt.), “Wherefore I said unto you from the beginning, Ye are not from the Cosmos; I likewise am not from it”; John xvii. 14: “(O Father) I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.” The parallel does not seem so close as to make it certain that one document is copying from the other. Both may very possibly be taken from some collection of Logia now lost, but at one time current in Alexandrian circles; or from the Gospel of the Egyptians, from which the Pistis Sophia afterwards quotes.

Footnote 550:

See Chap. IX, p. 107 supra.

Footnote 551:

See last note. The Authades or Proud God of the Pistis Sophia seems to have all the characteristics with which Valentinus endows his Demiurge.

Footnote 552:

So Pistis Sophia sings in her second hymn of praise after her deliverance from Chaos (p. 160, Copt.) “I am become pure light,” which she certainly was not before that event. Jesus also promises her later (p. 168, Copt.) that when the three times are fulfilled and the Authades is again wroth with her and tries to stir up Jaldabaoth and Adamas against her “I will take away their powers from them and give them to thee.” That this promise was supposed to be fulfilled seems evident from the low positions which Jaldabaoth and Adamas occupy in the Μέρος τευχῶν Σωτῆρος, while Pistis Sophia is said to furnish the “power” for the planet Venus.

Footnote 553:

See Chap. IX, p. 108 and n. 1 supra.

Footnote 554:

All the revelations in the Pistis Sophia are in fact made in anticipation of the time “when the universe shall be caught up,” and the disciples be set to reign with Jesus in the Last Parastates. Cf. especially pp. 193-206 Copt.

Footnote 555:

The idea may not have been peculiar to Valentinus and his followers. So in the Ascensio Isaiae (x. 8-13) the “Most High the Father of my Lord” says to “my Lord Christ who will be called Jesus”: “And none of the angels of that world shall know that thou art Lord with Me of the seven heavens and of their angels. And they shall not know that Thou art with Me till with a loud voice I have called to the heavens, and their angels, and their lights, even unto the sixth heaven, in order that you may judge and destroy the princes and angels and gods of that world, and the world that is dominated by them.” Charles, Ascension of Isaiah, pp. 70-71.

Footnote 556:

p. 194, Copt.

Footnote 557:

p. 230, Copt.

Footnote 558:

On the belief in the Millennium in the primitive Church, see Döllinger, First Age of Christianity and the Church, Eng. ed. 1906, pp. 119, 123 and 268 and Ffoulkes, s.v. Chiliasts, in Dict. Christian Biog.

Footnote 559:

p. 230, Copt. Cf. Luke xxii. 29, 30.

Footnote 560:

p. 231, Copt. “disciples” not apostles. So the Manichaeans made Manes to be attended by twelve disciples. See Chap. XIII infra.

Footnote 561:

So Jesus says (p. 230, Copt.) of “the man who receives and accomplishes the Mystery of the Ineffable One”; “he is a man in the Cosmos, but he will reign with me in my kingdom; he is a man in the Cosmos, but he is a king in the light; he is a man in the Cosmos, but he is not of the Cosmos, and verily I say unto you, that man is I, and I am that man.”

Footnote 562:

p. 246, Copt.

Footnote 563:

See last note and n. 5, p. 147 supra.

Footnote 564:

Hatch, op. cit. p. 302 and note.

Footnote 565:

pp. 236, 237, Copt.

Footnote 566:

Loc. cit. Or they may cover a kind of allegory, as we might say that Agape or Love makes Faith, Hope, and Charity. But I believe it to be more likely that the “12 mysteries” are letters in a word. So in the Μέρος τευχῶν Σωτῆρος it is said of the “Dragon of the Outer Darkness,” which is in fact the worst of all the hells described in that book: “And the Dragon of the Outer Darkness hath twelve true (αὐθέντη) names which are in his gates, a name according to each gate of the torture-chambers. And these names differ one from the other, but they belong to each of the twelve, so that he who saith one name, saith all the names. And these I will tell you in the Emanation of the Universe”—(p. 323, Copt.). If this be thought too trivial an explanation, Irenaeus tells us that the 18 Aeons remaining after deducting the Decad or Dodecad (as the case may be) from the rest of the Pleroma were, according to the Valentinians, signified by the two first letters of the name of Jesus: ἀλλὰ καὶ διὰ τῶν προηγουμένων τοῦ ὀνόματος αὐτοῦ δύο γραμμάτων, τοῦ τε ἰῶτα καὶ τοῦ ἦτα, τοὺς δεκαοκτὼ Αἰῶνας εὐσήμως μηνύεσθαι, Irenaeus, Βk I. c. 1, § 5, p. 26, Harvey. Equally absurd according to modern ideas are the words of the Epistle of Barnabas (c. X., pp. 23, 24, Hilgenfeld), where after quoting a verse in Genesis about Abraham circumcising 318 of his slaves (cf. Gen. xiv. 14), the author says “What then is the knowledge (γνῶσις) given therein? Learn that the 18 were first, and then after a pause, he says 300. (In) the 18, I = 10, H = 8, thou hast Jesus (Ἰησοῦν). And because the Cross was meant to have grace in the T, he says also 300. He expresses therefore Jesus by two letters and the Cross by one. He knows who has placed in us the ungrafted gift of teaching. None has learned from me a more genuine word. But I know that ye are worthy.”

Footnote 567:

“The True Word” or the Word of the Place of Truth. The latter expression is constantly used in other parts of the book, and seems to refer to the χώρημα or “receptacle,” that is the heaven, of the Aeon Ἀλήθεια, that is the Decad. Cf. especially the Μέρος τευχῶν Σωτῆρος (pp. 377, 378, Copt.), where it is said that certain baptisms and a “spiritual chrism” will lead the souls of the disciples “into the Places of Truth and Goodness, to the Place of the Holy of all Holies, to the Place in which there is neither female, nor male, nor shape in that Place, but there is Light, everlasting, ineffable.”

Footnote 568:

These ἀποτάγματα are set out in detail in the Μέρος τευχῶν Σωτῆρος (pp. 255 sqq. Copt.), where the disciples are ordered to “preach to the whole world ... renounce (ἀποτασσετε) the whole world and all the matter which is therein, and all its cares and all its sins, and in a word all its conversation (ὁμιλιαι) which is therein, that ye may be worthy of the mysteries of the Light, that ye may be preserved from all the punishments which are in the judgments” and so on. It should be noted that these are only required of the psychics or animal men.

Footnote 569:

No doubt in the Greek original the actual seal was here figured. For examples, see the Bruce Papyrus, passim. The idea is typically Egyptian. As M. Maspero says in his essay on “La Table d’Offrandes,” R.H.R. t. xxxv. No. 3 (1897), p. 325: no spell was in the view of the ancient Egyptians efficacious unless accompanied by a talisman or amulet which acted as a material support to it, as the body to the soul.

Footnote 570:

p. 238, Copt.

Footnote 571:

Hatch, op. cit. p. 296, n. 1, for references.

Footnote 572:

1 Cor. xv. 29. The practice of “baptizing for the dead,” as the A. V. has it, evidently continued into Tertullian’s time. See Tertull. de Resurrectione Carnis, c. XLVIII. p. 530, Oehler.

Footnote 573:

Döllinger, First Age, p. 327.

Footnote 574:

Hatch, op. cit. p. 307. The Emperor Constantine, who was baptized on his deathbed, was a case in point. The same story was told later about the Cathars or Manichaeans of Languedoc. The motive seems in all these cases to have been the same: as baptism washed away all sin, it was as well to delay it until the recipient could sin no more.

Footnote 575:

Hatch, op. cit. p. 295 and note, for references.

Footnote 576:

p. 236, Copt.

Footnote 577:

See n. 2, p. 166 supra.

Footnote 578:

Döllinger, First Age, pp. 234, 235.

Footnote 579:

Ibid. p. 235. Rom. vi. 4; Gal. iii. 27, 29, are quoted in support.

Footnote 580:

Ibid. p. 235. Rom. vii. 22; 1 Cor. vi. 14; Eph. iii. 16 and v. 30 are quoted in support.

Footnote 581:

Hatch, op. cit. p. 342.

Footnote 582:

p. 228, Copt.

Footnote 583:

pp. 230, 231, Copt.

Footnote 584:

The Pistis Sophia proper comes to an end twenty pages later.

Footnote 585:

Döllinger, First Age, p. 239. 1 Cor. x. 16 sqq.; Eph. v. 30, quoted in support.

Footnote 586:

Justin Martyr was probably born 114, and martyred 165 A.D. For the passage quoted in text, see his First Apology, c. LXVI., where he mentions among other things that the devils set on the worshippers of Mithras to imitate the Christian Eucharist by celebrating a ceremony with bread and a cup of water.

Footnote 587:

Hatch, op. cit. p. 308. This visible change of the contents of the cup of water to the semblance of blood is described in the Μέρος τευχῶν Σωτῆρος (p. 377, Copt.), and with more detail in the Bruce Papyrus. Cf. p. 183 infra.

Footnote 588:

Μέρος τευχῶν Σωτῆρος, p. 354, Copt.

Footnote 589:

Whether the author of the Pistis Sophia really intended to describe them may be doubted; but it is to be noted that the sacraments which Jesus is represented as celebrating in the Μέρος τευχῶν Σωτῆρος can hardly be they, although Jesus calls them in one place (p. 374, Copt.), “the mysteries of the light which remit sins, which themselves are appellations and names of light.” These are administered to the twelve disciples without distinction, and it is evident that the author of these books is quite unacquainted with any division into pneumatic and psychic, and knows nothing of the higher mysteries called in the Pistis Sophia proper “the mysteries of the Ineffable One” and “the mysteries of the First Mystery.” We should get over many difficulties if we supposed the two later books to be Marcosian in origin, but in any event they are later than the Pistis Sophia.

Footnote 590:

p. 246, Copt. So in the Manichaean text described in Chapter XIII, Jesus is Himself called “the Tree of Knowledge.”

Footnote 591:

So Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 1, § 11, pp. 58, 54, Harvey: Ἐπαιδεύθησαν γὰρ τὰ ψυχικὰ οἱ ψυχικοὶ ἄνθρωποι, οἱ δι’ ἔργων καὶ πίστεως ψιλῆς βεβαιούμενοι, καὶ μὴ τὴν τελείαν γνῶσιν ἔχοντες· εἶναι δὲ τούτους ἀπὸ τῆς Ἐκκλησίας ἡμᾶς λέγουσι· διὸ καὶ ἡμῖν μὲν ἀναγκαῖον εἶναι τὴν ἀγαθὴν πρᾶξιν ἀποφαίνονται· ἄλλως γὰρ ἀδύνατον σωθῆναι. Αὐτοὺς δὲ μὴ διὰ πράξεως, ἀλλὰ διὰ τὸ φύσει πνευματικοὺς εἶναι, πάντῃ τε καὶ πάντως σωθήσεσθαι δογματίζουσιν. “For the psychic (animal) men are taught psychic things, they being made safe by works and by mere faith, and not having perfect knowledge. And they say that we of the Church are these people. Wherefore they declare that good deeds are necessary for us: for otherwise we could not be saved. But they decree that they themselves are entirely and in every thing saved, not by works, but because they are pneumatic (spiritual) by nature.”

Footnote 592:

p. 249, Copt.

Footnote 593:

p. 250, Copt. It is to be observed that these “cleansing mysteries” will only admit their recipients to the light of the Kingdom of Jesus—not to that of the First Mystery or of the Ineffable One.

Footnote 594:

As did perhaps the Manichaeans afterwards. See J.R.A.S. for January, 1913, and Chap. XIII infra.

Footnote 595:

So Charles Kingsley in Hypatia. Gibbon, Decline and Fall, vol. IV. c. 60, n. 15, quotes a statement of Rufinus that there were nearly as many monks living in the deserts as citizens in the towns.

Footnote 596:

Mallet, Le Culte de Neit à Saïs, p. 200, points out that the God Nu described in the 18th Chapter of the Book of the Dead is “the infinite abyss, the Βυθός, the πατὴρ ἄγνωστος of the Gnostics.” So Maspero in Rev. Critique, 30 Sept. 1909, p. 13, who declares that the author of the Pistis Sophia was influenced directly or indirectly by Osirian beliefs.

Footnote 597:

Moret, Le verbe créateur et révélateur, p. 286, for references.

Footnote 598:

Maspero, Ét. Égyptol. t. II. p. 187: “L’ogdoade est une conception hermopolitaine qui s’est répandue plus tard sur toute l’Égypte à côté de l’ennéade d’Heliopolis. Les théologiens d’Hermopolis avaient adopté le concept de la neuvaine, seulement ils avaient amoindri les huit dieux qui formaient le corps du dieu principal. Ils les avaient reduits à n’être plus que des êtres presque abstraits nommés d’après la fonction qu’on leur assignait, en agissant en masse sur l’ordre et d’après l’impulsion du dieu chef. Leur ennéade se composait donc d’un dieu tout-puissant et d’une ogdoade.”

Footnote 599:

“Son origine (l’ogdoade hermopolitaine subordonné à un corps monade) est fort ancienne: on trouve quelques-unes des divinités qui la composent mentionnées déjà dans les textes des Pyramides.” Maspero, op. cit. t. II. p. 383. As he says later the actual number of gods in the Ennead or Ogdoad was a matter of indifference to the ancient Egyptian: “les dieux comptaient toujours pour neuf, quand même ils étaient treize ou quinze,” ibid. p. 387. Cf. Amélineau, Gnost. Ég. pp. 294, 295.

Footnote 600:

See n. 5, p. 175 supra, and Maspero, “Hypogées Royaux,” Ét. Égyptol. II. p. 130, n. 2.

Footnote 601:

See n. 2, p. 153 supra.

Footnote 602:

Maspero, “Hypogées Royaux,” t. II. p. 121.

Footnote 603:

Maspero, Rev. Crit. 30 Sept. 1909, p. 13.

Footnote 604:

Maspero, “Hypogées Royaux,” t. II. p. 118. Cf. Pistis Sophia, p. 84, Copt. and elsewhere.

Footnote 605:

Maspero, “La Table d’Offrandes,” R.H.R. t. XXXV. (1897) p. 325. As has been said, in the Ascensio Isaiae, anyone passing from one heaven to another has to give a password, but not to exhibit a seal.

Footnote 606:

Amélineau, Gnost. Ég. p. 196; Schmidt, Koptisch-Gnostische Schriften, Bd I. p. xiii.

Footnote 607:

It is so used in the Excerpta Theodoti, and in the Papyrus Bruce. See p. 190, infra.

Footnote 608:

Jean Reville, Le Quatrième Évangile, Paris, 1901, p. 321. Mgr Duchesne, Early Christian Church, pp. 102, 192, says in effect that St John’s Gospel appeared after the Apostle’s death and was not accepted without opposition. He thinks Tatian and Irenaeus the first writers who quoted from it with acknowledgement of its authorship. If we put the date of Tatian’s birth at 120 (see Dict. Christian Biog. s.h.n.) and allow a sufficient period for the initiation into heathen mysteries which he mentions, for his conversion and for his becoming a teacher, we do not get a much earlier date than 170 for his acceptance of the Fourth Gospel. Irenaeus was, of course, later in date than Tatian.

Footnote 609:

Tertullian, Adv. Valentinianos, c. 2.

Footnote 610:

Amélineau, Gnost. Ég. p. 180.

Footnote 611:

Tertullian, de Carne Christi, c. 20.

Footnote 612:

E.g. p. 47, Copt. Cf. also ibid. pp. 147, 170, 176.

Footnote 613:

Tertullian, adv. Val. c. v.

Footnote 614:

Op. cit. c. 9.

Footnote 615:

Op. cit. c. 18.

Footnote 616:

Op. cit. c. 20.

Footnote 617:

Op. cit. c. 25.

Footnote 618:

Tertullian, de Carne Christi, c. 9. Irenaeus, Bk II. c. 7, § 1, p. 270, Harvey, seems to have known both of Barbelo and of the Virgin of Light, since he speaks of corpora sursum ... spiritalia et lucida, “spiritual and translucent bodies on high” casting a shadow below in quam Matrem suam descendisse dicunt “into which they allege their Mother descended.”

Footnote 619:

ⲞⲨ ⲘⲈⲢⲞⲤ ⲎⲦⲈ Ⲏ ⲦⲈⲨⲬⲞⲤ Ⲙ ⲎⲤⲰⲦⲎⲢ, or (in Greek) Μέρος τευχῶν Σωτῆρος.

Footnote 620:

“This I say to you in paradigm, and likeness and similitude, but not in truth of shape, nor have I revealed the word in truth,” p. 253, Copt. So in the next page (p. 254, Copt.), Jesus says of the perfect initiate that “He also has found the words of the Mysteries, those which I have written to you according to similitude—the same are the members of the Ineffable One.” From His mention of “writing,” one would imagine that the reference here is to documents such as the Bruce Papyrus which gives the pictures of “seals” together with cryptographically written words.

Footnote 621:

p. 357, Copt. This opening sentence could not have been written by one of the Valentinians of Hadrian’s time, who, as has been said above, “did not choose to call Jesus, Lord,” Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 1, I. p. 12, Harvey.

Footnote 622:

In the address of Jesus beginning “O my Father, Father of every Fatherhood, boundless light” with which this part of the Μ. τ. σ. opens, we can, with a little good will, identify nearly every word of the “galimatias” which at first sight seems mere gibberish. Thus, the whole invocation reads: αεηιουω, ϊαω, αωϊ, οϊαψινωθερ, θερ[ι]νοψ, νωψιθερ, ζαγουρη, παγουρη, νεθμομαωθ, νεψιομαωθ, μαραχαχθα, θωβαρραβαυ, θαρναχαχαν, ζοροκοθορα Ιεου Σαβαωθ. The seven vowels to which many mystical interpretations have been assigned, and which have even been taken for a primitive system of musical notation (C. E. Ruelle, “Le Chant des Sept Voyelles Grecques,” Rev. des Ét. Grecques, Paris, 1889, t. II. p. 43, and pp. 393-395), probably express the sound to Greek ears of the Jewish pronunciation of Yahweh or Jehovah. The word Iao we have before met with many times both as a name of Dionysos and otherwise, and is here written anagrammatically from the difficulty which the Greeks found in dealing with Semitic languages written the reverse way to their own. The word ψινωθερ which follows and is also written as an anagram is evidently an attempt to transcribe in Greek letters the Egyptian words P, Shai, neter (P = Def. article, Shai = the Egyptian God of Fate whose name Revillout, Rev. Égyptol. Paris, 1892, pp. 29-38, thinks means “The Highest,” and neter or nuter the determinative for “god”), the whole reading “Most High God.” The words ζαγουρη παγουρη (better, πατουρη) are from the Hebrew roots סגר פטר and seem to be the “he that openeth and no man shutteth; and shutteth and no man openeth” of Rev. iii. 7. Νεθμομαωθ, which is often found in the Magic Papyri, is reminiscent of the Egyptian neb maat “Lord of Truth,” the following νεψιομαωθ being probably a variant by a scribe who was uncertain of the orthography. Μαραχαχθα I can make nothing of, although as the phrase νεφθομαωθ μαραχαχθα appears in the Magic Papyrus of Leyden generally called W (Leemans, Papyri Graeci, etc. t. II. p. 154) in a spell there said to be written by “Thphe the Hierogrammateus” for “Ochus the king,” it is evidently intended for Egyptian. In the same spell appear the words θαρνμαχαχ ζοροκοθορα and θωβαρραβαυ which are evidently the same as those in the Μ. τ. σ., and of which I will only say that, while Mr King supposes ζοροκοθορα to mean “light-gatherer,” θωβαρραβαυ is in the leaden tabula devotionis of Carthage (Molinier, “Imprecation gravée sur plomb,” Mem. de la Soc. Nat. des Antiquaires de France, série VI. t. VIII. Paris, 1897, pp. 212-216) described as τον θεὸν του τῆς παλινγενεσιας “the god of rebirth.” The concluding words are of course merely “Yahweh of Hosts.”

Footnote 623:

The description of the moon-chariot drawn by two white oxen is found in Claudian’s Proserpine. According to Cumont (Textes et Monuments relatifs aux Mystères de Mithra, t. I. p. 126 and note) it was not until Hadrian’s time that this conception, which seems to have been Persian in origin, became fixed in the West.

Footnote 624:

This “Middle Way” has nothing to do with the τόπος or “place” of the middle, where are set in the Pistis Sophia proper the powers who preside over incarnation. It is below the visible sphere (p. 364, Copt.) and is met with in Rabbinic lore. See Kohler, op. cit. p. 587.

Footnote 625:

This division of the Twelve Aeons into two halves seems at first sight inconsistent with the description in the Pistis Sophia proper which always speaks of them as Twelve. Yet it is plain that the author of the Pistis Sophia knew the legend here given, as he makes John the Divine speak (p. 12, Copt.) of “the rulers who belong to the Aeon of Jabraoth” and had made peace with the mysteries of the light. These “rulers who repented” are again mentioned on p. 195, Copt. In the other part of the Μέρος τευχῶν Σωτῆρος (p. 356, Copt.), it is also said that the souls of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are to be placed in “the Place of Jabraoth and of all the rulers who repented” until Jesus can take them with Him to the light. So the Papyrus Bruce (Amélineau, p. 239).

Footnote 626:

There are seven pages missing between the descriptions of the tortures of the Middle Way and those of Amenti and Chaos, the gap occurring at p. 379, Copt. It is possible that what follows after this is not from the Μέρος τευχῶν Σωτῆρος but an extract from yet another document.

Footnote 627:

In the text of the Μ. τ. σ. (p. 377, Copt.), Jesus simply asks His father for a sign, and “the sign is made which Jesus had said.” In the Papyrus Bruce where the same ceremony is described in almost identical words, it is said that the wine of the offering was turned into water which leaped forth of the vase which contained it so as to serve for baptism. Cf. Amélineau, Gnost. Ég. p. 253. That Marcus the magician by juggling produced similar prodigies, see Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 7, II. pp. 116, 117, Harvey.

Footnote 628:

The name of Jaldabaoth, which in the whole of the rest of the MS. is spelt ⲒⲀⲖⲆⲀⲂⲀⲰⲐ, appears on p. 380 immediately after the lacuna of seven pages as ⲒⲀⲖⲦⲀⲂⲀⲰⲐ, Ialtabaoth, which supports the theory of another author.

Footnote 629:

This is also briefly mentioned in the part of the Μέρος τευχῶν Σωτῆρος just described. See pp. 386, sqq., Copt.

Footnote 630:

This appears to contradict the Pistis Sophia proper, where it is said that the Virgin of Light gives the soul, and the Great Iao the Good the power.

Footnote 631:

Cf. the speech of the crocodile in the tale of the Predestined Prince: “Ah, moi, je suis ton destin qui te poursuit; quoi que tu fasses, tu seras ramené sur mon chemin.” Maspero, Contes Populaires de l’Égypte Ancienne, 3rd ed. Paris, n. d. p. 175.

Footnote 632:

Evidently the Egyptian ka or double. Cf. the “Heart Amulet” described by Erman, Handbook of Egyptian Religion, pp. 142, 143, where the dead says to his heart: “Oh heart that I have from my mother! Oh heart that belongs to my spirit, do not appear against me as witness, provide no opposition against me before the judges, do not contradict me before him who governs the balance, thou art my spirit that is in my body....” This seems to be a transcription of the 30th Chapter of the Book of the Dead, of which there are several variants, none of which however directly suggest that the heart is the accuser to be dreaded. See Budge, Book of the Dead, 1909, vol. II. pp. 146-152.

Footnote 633:

Thus the Μ. τ. σ. says (p. 355, Copt.) “For this I despoiled myself (i.e. laid aside my heavenly nature) to bring the mysteries into the Cosmos, for all are under [the yoke of] sin, and all lack the gifts of the mysteries.... Verily, verily I say unto you: until I came into the Cosmos, no soul entered into the light.” Contrast this with the words of the Pistis Sophia proper (p. 250, Copt.): “Those who are of the light have no need of the mysteries, because they are pure light,” which are made the “interpretation” of the text: “They that are whole have no need of a physician, but they that are sick.” See also the Pistis Sophia, p. 246, Copt., where it is said of the mysteries promised by Jesus that “they lead every race of men inwards into the highest places according to the χωρημα of the inheritance, so that ye have no need of the rest of the lower mysteries, but you will find them in the two books of Jeû which Enoch wrote etc.”

Footnote 634:

p. 280, Copt.

Footnote 635:

Μ. τ. σ. p. 388, Copt., where it is said that the soul of the righteous but uninitiated man is after death taken into Amenti and afterwards into the Middle Way, being shown the tortures in each place, “but the breath of the flame of the punishments shall only afflict him a little.” Afterwards he is taken to the Virgin of Light, who sets him before the Little Sabaoth the Good until the Sphere be turned round so that Zeus (♃) and Aphrodite (♀) come into aspect with the Virgin of Light and Kronos (♄) and Ares (♂) come after them. She then puts the soul into a righteous body, which she plainly could not do unless under the favourable influence of the “benefics” ♃ and ♀. This seems also to be the dominant idea of the Excerpta Theodoti, q.v. Compare this, however, with the words of the Pistis Sophia proper (pp. 27, 28, Copt.) where Mary Magdalene explains that the alteration made by Jesus in the course of the stars was effected in order to baffle those skilled in the mysteries taught by the angels “who came down” (as in the Book of Enoch), from predicting the future by astrology and magic arts learned from the sinning angels.

Footnote 636:

p. 361, Copt.

Footnote 637:

That is the Sphere of Destiny acting through its emissary the Moira or Fate described above, p. 184 supra.

Footnote 638:

It is a curious example of the fossilizing, so to speak, of ancient names in magic that Shakespeare should preserve for us in the Tempest and Macbeth the names of Ariel and Hecate which we find in the Μ. τ. σ. No doubt both were taken by him from mediaeval grimoires which themselves copied directly from the Graeco-Egyptian Magic Papyri mentioned in Chap. III supra. Cf. the use of Greek “names of God” like ischiros (sic!) athanatos, etc. in Reginald Scot’s Discovery of Witchcraft, passim.

Footnote 639:

So that it could not profit by the knowledge of the awful punishments prepared for sinners. I do not know that this idea occurs elsewhere.

Footnote 640:

p. 380, Copt.

Footnote 641:

The Marcosian authorship of the whole MS. is asserted by Bunsen, Hippolytus and his Age, vol. I. p. 47. Köstlin, Über das gnostische System des Buch Pistis Sophia in the Theologische Jahrbücher of Baur and Zeller, Tübingen, 1854, will have none of it, and declares the Pistis Sophia to be an Ophite work. In this, the first commentator on the book is followed by Grüber, Der Ophiten, Würzburg, 1864, p. 5, §§ 3, 4.

Footnote 642:

Clem. Alex. Strom. Bk I. c. 19.

Footnote 643:

Thus, according to Marcus (Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 8, § 11, pp. 145, 146, Harvey), “that name of the Saviour which may be pronounced, i.e. Jesus, is composed of six letters, but His ineffable name of 24.” The cryptogram in the Pistis Sophia is in these words (p. 125, Copt.): “These are the names which I will give thee from the Boundless One downwards. Write them with a sign that the sons of God may show them forth of this place. This is the name of the Deathless One ααα ωωω, and this is the name of the word by which the Perfect Man is moved: ιιι. These are the interpretations of the names of the mysteries. The first is ααα, the interpretation of which is φφφ. The second which is μμμ or which is ωωω, its interpretation is ααα. The third is ψψψ, its interpretation is οοο. The fourth is φφφ, its interpretation is ννν. The fifth is δδδ, its interpretation is ααα, which above the throne is ααα. This is the interpretation of the second αααα, αααα, αααα, which is the interpretation of the whole name.” The line drawn above the three Alphas and Omegas is used in the body of the text to denote words in a foreign (i.e. non-Egyptian) language such as Hebrew; but in the Papyrus Bruce about to be described, the same letters without any line above are given as the name of “the Father of the Pleroma.” See Amélineau’s text, p. 113. The “moving” of the image (πλάσμα) of the Perfect Man is referred to in Hippolytus (op. cit. p. 144, Cruice). That the Tetragrammaton was sometimes written by Jewish magicians with three Jods or i.i.i. see Gaster, The Oldest Version of Midrash Megillah, in Kohut’s Semitic Studies, Berlin, 1897, p. 172. So on a magic cup in the Berlin Museum, conjuration is made “in the name of Jahve the God of Israel who is enthroned upon the cherubim ... and in the name A A A A” (Stübe, Judisch-Babylonische Zaubertexte, Halle, 1895, pp. 23-27). For the meaning of the words “above the throne,” see Franck, La Kabbale, p. 45, n. 2.

Footnote 644:

The opening words of the invocation βασεμὰ χαμοσσὴ βαιανορὰ μισταδία ῥουαδὰ κουστὰ βαβοφὸρ καλαχθεῖ which Irenaeus (Bk I. c. 14, § 2, pp. 183, 184, Harvey) quotes in this connection from Marcus certainly read, as Renan (L’Église Chrétienne, p. 154, n. 3) points out, “In the name of Achamoth” (i.e. Sophia).

Footnote 645:

See n. 3, p. 180, supra. In the Pistis Sophia proper Jesus is never spoken of save as “the Saviour” or as “the First Mystery.”

Footnote 646:

Cf. Maspero, Hypogées Royaux, passim, esp. pp. 157 and 163.

Footnote 647:

Schmidt’s study of the Bruce Papyrus with a full text and translation was published in the Texte und Untersuchungen of von Gebhardt and Harnack under the title Gnostische Schriften in Koptischer Sprache aus dem Codex Brucianus, Leipzig, 1892. He republished the translation of this together with one of the Pistis Sophia in the series of early Greek Christian literature undertaken by the Patristic Committee of the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences under the title Koptisch-Gnostische Schriften, Bd I. Leipzig, 1905. His arrangement of the papyrus leaves makes much better sense than that of Amélineau, but it is only arrived at by eliminating all passages which seem to be inconsequent and attributing them to separate works. The fragments which he distinguishes as A and B and describes as “gnostischen Gebetes,” certainly appear to form part of those which he describes as the two “books of Jeû.”

Footnote 648:

Amélineau, “Notice sur le Papyrus gnostique Bruce,” Notices et Extraits des MSS. de la Bibl. Nat. etc. Paris, 1891, p. 106. This would seem to make matter the creation of God, but the author gets out of the dilemma by affirming (op. cit. p. 126) that “that which was not was the evil which is manifested in matter” and that while that which exists is called αἰώνιος, “everlasting,” that which does not exist is called ὕλη, “matter.”

Footnote 649:

Amélineau, op. cit. p. 231.

Footnote 650:

This word arrangement (οἰκονομία) occurs constantly in the Pistis Sophia, as when we read (p. 193, Copt.) that the last παραστάτης by the command of the First Mystery placed Jeû, Melchisedek, and four other powers in the τόπος of those who belong to the right hand πρός οἰκονομίας of the Assembly of the Light. There, as here, it doubtless means that they were arranged in the same order as the powers above them in pursuance of the principle that “that which is above is like that which is below,” or, in other words, of the doctrine of correspondences. From the Gnostics the word found its way into Catholic theology, as when Tertullian (adv. Praxean, c. 3) says that the majority of simple-minded Christians “not understanding that though God be one, he must yet be believed to exist with his οἰκονομία, were frightened.” Cf. Hatch, H.L. p. 324.

Footnote 651:

Perhaps the House or Place of Ἀλήθεια or Truth many times alluded to in the Μ. τ. σ.

Footnote 652:

Aerôdios is shortly after spoken of as a person or power, so that here, as elsewhere, in this literature, the place is called by the name of its ruler.

Footnote 653:

This word constantly occurs in the Magic Papyri, generally with another word prefixed, as σεσενγεν βαρφαραγγης (Papyrus Mimaut, l. 12, Wessely’s Griechische Zauberpapyri, p. 116), which C. W. King (Gnostics and their Remains, 2nd ed. p. 289) would translate “they who stand before the mount of Paradise” or in other words the Angels of the Presence. Amélineau (Notices, etc. p. 144, n. 2) will have Barpharanges to be “a hybrid word, part Chaldean and part Greek” meaning “Son of the Abyss”—which is as unlikely as the other interpretation.

Footnote 654:

p. 143, Amélineau (Notices, etc.); p. 361, Schmidt, K.-G.S.

Footnote 655:

According to Amélineau, op. cit., “The Book of the Great Word in Every Mystery.”

Footnote 656:

pp. 188-199, Amélineau, op. cit.; Schmidt, K.-G.S. pp. 308-314.

Footnote 657:

pp. 219, 220, Amélineau, op. cit.; Schmidt, K.-G.S. p. 226. She seems to be here called “the Great Virgin of the Spirit.” Cf. the Ὑπέθεντο γὰρ Αἰῶνα τινὰ ἀνώλεθρον ἐν παρθενικῷ διάγοντι πνεύματι, ὁ βαρβηλὼθ ὀνομάζουσι, “For [some of them] suppose a certain indestructible Aeon continuing in a Virgin spirit whom they call Barbelo” of Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 27, § 1, p. 222, Harvey.

Footnote 658:

The powers named are thus called in both the Pistis Sophia and the Bruce Papyrus. See Pistis Sophia, pp. 248, 252 Copt.; Amélineau, op. cit. p. 177.

Footnote 659:

According to the Pistis Sophia (p. 1, Copt.), 11 years elapsed between the Crucifixion and the descent of the “Vestures” upon Jesus on the Mount of Olives. We may imagine another year to have been consumed by the revelations made in the book.

Footnote 660:

If the “Books of Jeû” were ever written we should expect them to bear the name of Enoch, who is said to have taken them down in Paradise at the dictation of Jesus. See p. 147, n. 5, supra. Very possibly the expression really does refer to some of the mass of literature once passing under the name of Enoch and now lost to us.

Footnote 661:

Amélineau, op. cit. p. 72.

Footnote 662:

Schmidt, K.-G.S. p. 26.

Footnote 663:

Amélineau, op. cit. p. 211; Schmidt, K.-G.S. p. 322. The West or Amenti is the Egyptian name for Hades.

Footnote 664:

Maspero, “Egyptian Souls and their Worlds,” Ét. Égyptol. t. I. p. 395.

Footnote 665:

Maspero, “Hypogées Royaux,” Ét. Égyptol. t. II. pp. 148, 165.

Footnote 666:

Ibid. pp. 178, 179.

Footnote 667:

Ibid. p. 31.

Footnote 668:

Ibid. pp. 14-15.

Footnote 669:

Ibid. p. 166. To make things more difficult, the guardian sometimes had a different name for every hour. Cf. ibid. p. 168.

Footnote 670:

Ibid. pp. 124, n. 2, 163. For the talismans or amulets, see Maspero, “La Table d’Offrandes,” R.H.R. t. XXXV. (1897), p. 325.

Footnote 671:

Maspero, “Hyp. Roy.” pp. 113, 118.

Footnote 672:

Ibid. pp. 162, 163.

Footnote 673:

Ibid. pp. 41, 163.

Footnote 674:

Ibid. p. 178.

Footnote 675:

Ibid. p. 179.

Footnote 676:

The kings, according to a belief which was evidently very old in the time of the Pyramid-Builders, were supposed to possess immortality as being gods even in their lifetime. Later, the gift was extended to rulers of nomes and other rich men, and finally to all those who could purchase the spells that would assure it. In Maspero’s words “La vie d’au delà n’était pas un droit pour l’Égyptien: il pouvait la gagner par la vertu des formules et des pratiques, mais il pouvait aussi bien la perdre, et s’il était pauvre ou isolé, les chances étaient qu’il la perdit à bref délai” (op. cit. p. 174).

Footnote 677:

p. 254, Copt.

Footnote 678:

de Faye (Intro. etc. p. 110) shows clearly, not only that the aims and methods of the school of Valentinus changed materially after its founder’s death, but that it was only then that the Catholic Church perceived the danger of them, and set to work to combat them systematically.

Footnote 679:

To thinkers like Dean Inge (Christian Mysticism, 1899, p. 82) this was the natural and appointed end of Gnosticism, which according to him was “rotten before it was ripe.” “It presents,” he says, “all the features which we shall find to be characteristic of degenerate mysticism. Not to speak of its oscillations between fanatical austerities and scandalous licence, and its belief in magic and other absurdities, we seem, when we read Irenaeus’ description of a Valentinian heretic, to hear the voice of Luther venting his contempt upon some Geisterer of the sixteenth century.” It may be so; yet, after all, Gnosticism in its later developments lasted for a longer time than the doctrines of Luther have done, particularly in the land of their birth.

Footnote 680:

Cf. Maspero, Life in Ancient Egypt and Assyria, Eng. ed. 1892, pp. 90-92, for the distaste of the Egyptians of Ramesside times for the life of a soldier and their delight in that of a scribe.

Footnote 681:

All these, especially alchemy, are illustrated in the Magic Papyrus of Leyden known as W. See Leemans, Pap. Gr. t. II. pp. 83 sqq.

Footnote 682:

Gibbon, Decline and Fall, vol. III. p. 214, Bury’s ed.

Footnote 683:

Renan, L’Église Chrétienne, pp. 154, 155, and authorities there quoted. Cf. Hatch, H. L. pp. 129, 130, 293, 307-309.

Footnote 684:

Harnack, What is Christianity? p. 210; Duchesne, Early Christian Church, p. 32.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

XI. MARCION

We have seen that Valentinus left Alexandria to settle in Rome before promulgating his new doctrine[685], and the Eternal City seems at that time to have drawn to itself as with a magnet all those Oriental teachers of Christianity who wished to make innovation in religion. Rome in the IInd century had become a veritable sink into which poured men of all nations and creeds whether old or new. Besides the great flood of Isiacists, Mithraists, and worshippers of the Great Goddess and of the Syrian Baals, that now began to appear there, Alexander of Abonoteichos came thither under Marcus Aurelius to celebrate his newly-invented mysteries[686], and succeeded in gaining a foothold at the Imperial Court. Moreover in A.D. 140, the terrible war of extermination which Hadrian had been compelled much against his will to wage against the Jewish nation was at length over, and the effect of this was to transfer a great number of Asiatic and African Christians to the world’s metropolis, while making it more than ever expedient for them to disclaim connection with the Jews. The slightly contemptuous toleration, too, which the statesmanlike Hadrian seems to have extended to the Christians[687], was not likely to be withdrawn without reason by his philosophic successor, Antoninus Pius; and it was doubtless the consciousness of this which led to the appearance of the various “apologies” for, or defences of, Christianity which Quadratus, Aristides, Justin Martyr, and other persons with some philosophic training now began to put forth. In such of these as have come down to us, the desire of their authors to dissociate themselves from the Jews, then at the nadir of their unpopularity, is plainly manifest, and no doubt gave the note to the innovators[688]. It is certainly very marked in the heresy of Marcion, which, unlike those of Valentinus and the other Gnostics, was to culminate in the setting-up of a schismatic Church in opposition to that founded on the Apostles.

Marcion was, according to the better account, a wealthy shipowner of Pontus and probably a convert to Christianity[689]. He seems to have been born at Sinope, at one time the most important of the Greek towns on the Southern shore of the Euxine or Black Sea. Mithridates the Great, who was also born there, had made Sinope his capital, and though it had no doubt declined in rank since his time, it must still have been, in the year 100 A.D. (the probable date of Marcion’s birth), a flourishing and prosperous place[690]. As in all the cities of Asia Minor, the Stoic philosophy had there obtained a firm hold, and there is some reason for thinking that Marcion received lessons in this before his conversion[691]. Of the circumstances which led to this event we have no knowledge, and it was even said in later times that he was born a Christian, and that his father had been a bishop of the Church. A better founded story is that, on his conversion, he brought into the common fund of the Church a considerable sum of money, which is said to have been paid out to him on his expulsion[692]. When at the mature age of forty he went to Rome, it seems reasonable to suppose that he accepted the orthodox teaching, as it is said that there was some talk of his being made bishop of what was even then the richest and highest in rank of all the Christian Churches. At Rome, however, he fell in with one Cerdo, a Syrian, who seems to have been already domiciled there and to have taught in secret a pronouncedly dualistic system in which God and Matter were set in sharp opposition to one another, and in which it was held that a good God could not have been the author of this wicked world[693]. This opinion Marcion adopted and elaborated, with the result that he was expelled from the Catholic Church, and thereupon set to work to found another, having bishops, priests, deacons, and other officers in close imitation of the community he had left[694]. It is said that before his death he wished to be reconciled to the Church, but was told that he could only be readmitted when he had restored to the fold the flock that he had led away from it. This, on the authority of Tertullian, he would have been willing to do; but his rival Church had by that time so enormously increased in numbers, that he died, probably in 165 A.D., before he was able to make the restitution required[695]. This story also can only be accepted with a great deal of reserve[696].

It is abundantly plain, however, that Marcion was regarded not only by the professed heresiologists of the succeeding age, but also by teachers like Justin Martyr and the learned Clement of Alexandria, as one of the most formidable enemies of the Church, whose evil influence persisted even after his death[697]. By the reign of Gratian, his rival Church had spread over Italy, Egypt, Palestine, Arabia, Syria, and Persia[698]; and, although the main authority for the increase is the always doubtful one of Epiphanius, this last was not likely to have unduly magnified the success of the Church’s rival, and his story has the confirmation of Tertullian that in his time the Marcionites made churches “as wasps make nests[699].” Every Father of note seems to have written against the heresiarch who had thus dared, as was said, to turn away souls from Christ, and Polycarp, the saint and martyr, when Marcion claimed acquaintance with him in Rome on the strength of a former meeting in Smyrna, replied with much heat, “Yes, I know thee! the first-born of Satan[700].” So late as the Council in Trullo in the VIIth century, special arrangements had to be made for the reception of Marcionites who wished to be reconciled to the Church, and forms of abjuration of the sect are said to have lingered until the Xth[701].

That this longevity was purchased by no willingness to make the best of both worlds or to enjoy peace by compromising with heathenism in the way we have seen prevalent among the Alexandrian Gnostics, is at once evident. Alone among the heretics of the sub-Apostolic Age, the Fathers declare, the Marcionites held fast their faith in time of persecution, while they refused to frequent the circus and the theatre and practised an austerity of life putting to shame even the ascetics among the orthodox.[702] Marcion himself underwent none of the slanders on his personal morals which theologians generally heap upon their opponents[703], and none of his tenets are said by either Tertullian or Epiphanius, who took his refutation most seriously in hand, to have been borrowed from those Pagan rites or mysteries which they looked upon as forming the most shameful source from which to contaminate the pure doctrine of the Church. Irenaeus, who was his junior by some twenty or thirty years, and may have known him personally, says indeed that he was a disciple of Simon Magus[704], but in this he may have alluded merely to his position as the founder of a rival Church. Hippolytus is silent about this; but, true to his system of attacking philosophy on account of its supposed connection with heresy, says that Marcion is a disciple, not of Christ, but of Empedocles[705]. There is much to be said for the view that Marcion’s heresy was so well and firmly established before the end of the IInd century, that those who then denounced it really knew little of its beginnings[706]. They are, however, unanimous as to the more than Puritanical attitude adopted by its founders. The Marcionites were allowed neither to drink wine nor to eat flesh, and those believers in their tenets who were married had either to separate from their wives or to remain among the catechumens until about to die, it being unlawful for them to receive baptism save on their deathbeds[707].

Marcion’s, indeed, seems to have been one of those ruggedly logical and uncompromising natures, not to be led away by reverence for authority or tradition, which appear once or twice in the history of most religions; and it is doubtless this quality which has led Prof. Harnack, as did Neander in the last century, to claim him as the first reformer of the Catholic Church[708]. Like another Luther, Marcion declared that the Church had become corrupted by the additions made by men to the pure teaching she had received from her Founder, and that only in return to her primitive faith was safety to be found. For this primitive faith, he appealed, like the makers of the German Reformation, to the words of Scripture, but he differed from them most widely in the limitations that he placed upon them. It was, he declared, impossible to find any attributes in common between the God of the Old Testament and the Supreme (and benevolent) Being of whom Jesus announced Himself the Son, and he therefore rejected the Old Testament entirely. In the same way, he said that the Canonical Gospels then received among Christians had become overlaid with Jewish elements introduced by the Asiatic converts among whom they were first circulated; and that the narrative in the Gospel according to Luke was alone trustworthy[709]. From this also, he removed the whole series of traditions concerning the Birth and Infancy of Jesus; and made it begin in effect with the words of the fourth chapter in which is described the coming-down of Jesus to “Capernaum, a city of Galilee.” These he combined with the opening words of Luke iii., so that the event was described as taking place in the “fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar[710].” He also excised from the Gospel everything which could indicate any respect shown by the Founder of Christianity to the Torah or Law of the Jews, the allusions to the Jewish traditions concerning Jonah and the Queen of Sheba, the supposed fulfilment of the Jewish prophecies in the person and acts of Jesus, and the statement that He took part in the Paschal Feast. He further removed from it every passage which represents Jesus as drinking wine or taking part in any festivity, and in the Lord’s Prayer he struck out the petition for delivery from evil, while modifying the “Hallowed be thy name!” It has been suggested that in this last case he may have given us an older version than that of the Canon[711].

With the remainder of the New Testament, Marcion took similar liberties. He rejected entirely the Acts of the Apostles, The Apocalypse of St John, the Epistle to the Hebrews, and the Epistles generally called “Pastoral,” as well as all those passing under the names of St John, St James, St Peter and St Jude. For the Apostle Paul, however, Marcion had a profound admiration, pronouncing him to be the only true follower of Jesus, and he accepted with some alterations the ten epistles which he thought could with confidence be attributed to him. These were the Epistles to the Galatians, the two to the Corinthians, the one to the Romans, both those to the Thessalonians, that to the Ephesians or, as he preferred to call it, to the Laodiceans, and those to the Colossians, to Philemon, and to the Philippians. From these ten epistles, he removed everything which described the fulfilment of the prophecies of the Jewish prophets, all allusions to the Parusia or Second Coming, and some expressions which seemed to him to militate against the asceticism that he himself favoured[712]. All these alterations seem to have been set down by Marcion in a book to which he gave the name of the Antitheses, and which contained his statement of the incongruities apparent between the Old and New Testaments. This book is now lost, and the details of Marcion’s emendations have in consequence to be picked out from the treatise of Tertullian against him, the statements of Epiphanius, and the anonymous discourse de Recta Fide which is sometimes included in the works of Origen[713].

If these alterations of the Scriptures generally received depended on any independent tradition, or even upon a rational criticism, they would be of the greatest use to modern textual critics, who have in consequence hoped eagerly that some lucky chance might yet give us a copy of Marcion’s Gospel.[714] But the Fathers make no allusion to any claim of the kind; and in the absence of Marcion’s own words, it seems likely that his alterations were merely dictated by the preoccupation regarding the Divine nature which seems with him to have amounted to a passion. Never, he said, could the jealous and irascible God of the Jews be identified with the loving and benevolent Spirit whom Jesus called His Father. Hence there was not one God; but two Gods. One of these was the Supreme Being, perfect in power as in goodness, whose name, as perhaps the Orphics and the Ophites taught, was Love[715]. Too great to concern Himself with sublunary things, and too pure, as Plato and Philo had both said, to have any dealings with an impure and sinful world, He remained seated apart in the third or highest heaven, inaccessible to and unapproachable by man, like the unknown Father of Valentinus and the other Gnostic sects[716]. Below Him was the Creator, or rather the Demiurge or Fashioner of the World, in constant conflict with matter, which he is always trying unsuccessfully to conquer and subdue in accordance with his own limited and imperfect ideas. Just, according to Marcion, was the Demiurge, whom he identified with the God of the Jews; and it was this attribute of justice which prevented him from being considered wholly evil in his nature, as was Satan, the active agent of the matter with which the Demiurge was always striving. Yet the Demiurge was the creator of evil on his own showing[717], and as such is entitled to no adoration from man, whom he has brought into a world full of evil. Man’s rescue from this is due to the Supreme God, who sent His Son Jesus Christ on earth that He might reveal to mankind His Heavenly Father, and thus put an end to the sway of the Demiurge.

That Jesus on His coming was seized and slain by the Jews, with at least the connivance of the Demiurge, Marcion admitted. But as this might seem like a defeat of the Supreme Being by His inferior, he was forced to accept the theory called Docetism which was in favour with many other Gnostics. According to this, the body of Jesus was not real flesh and blood, and had indeed no actual existence, but was a phantasm which only appeared to mankind in the likeness of a man[718]. Hence it mattered nothing that this body, which did not really exist, appeared to suffer, to be slain, and even to rise again. The Supreme God was not mocked, and the resurrection of the body was to Marcion a thing unthinkable.

In lesser matters, Marcion’s dislike of the God of the Jews is, perhaps, more marked. Man’s body, according to him, was made by the Demiurge out of matter[719], but without any spark from a higher world infused into it, as the Ophites and Valentinus had taught. Hence man was naturally inclined to evil, and the Law which the Demiurge delivered to him was more or less of a snare. Man was sure to give way to the evil desires inherent in matter, and on doing so became with all his race subject to the power of matter and the evil spirits inhabiting it. It is true that the Demiurge had devised a plan of salvation in the shape of the Law of the Jews delivered to them on Sinai. But this concerned one small people only, and it was but a fraction of that community which could hope to observe it in all its forms and ceremonies. Did they do so, the Demiurge would provide for them a modified felicity in that region of Hades called the Bosom of Abraham[720]. For those Gentiles, and even for those Jews who from weakness or obstinacy did not obey the Law, he had prepared punishment and, apparently, eternal tortures. It is true that he promised the Jews a Messiah who should lead them to the conquest of the earth, but this leader certainly was not Jesus[721]; and it is probable that Marcion thought that His Mission had put it out of the power of the Demiurge to fulfil any of these promises.

Possibly it was the same dislike of the Jews that led Marcion to consider St Paul as the only real apostle of Jesus. The others, he said, had overlaid the faith that they had received with Jewish traditions; but Paul, chosen by Jesus after His Ascension[722], had resisted their attempt to reintroduce the Law of the Jews, and was, in his own words, an apostle sent not from men, nor by man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised Him from the dead.[723] Marcion also seems to have laid stress upon St Paul’s wonder that the Galatians were “so soon removed from Him who hath called you to His grace to another Gospel[724],” with the suggestion that this second gospel was the contrivance of the Demiurge; and generally to have accentuated the controversy between St Peter and St Paul mentioned in the Epistle bearing their name[725]. From the same Epistle to the Galatians, Marcion appears to have erased the name of Abraham where his blessing is said to have “come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ[726]”; and in like manner, to have read into the passage in the First Epistle to the Corinthians[727], where it is said that “the world by wisdom knew not God,” expressions implying that it was the “Lord of this World,” i.e. the Demiurge, who was ignorant of the Supreme Being[728]. As this ignorance of the Demiurge was a favourite theme of the Ophites and other Gnostics, it is possible that Marcion was more indebted to these predecessors of his than modern commentators on his teaching are inclined to allow; but he perhaps justified his reading by tacking it on to the passage in the Second Epistle to the Corinthians which says that “the God of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine upon them[729].” From the Epistle to the Romans, in which he seems to have made very large erasures[730], Marcion draws further arguments in favour of his contention that the Jews were kept in ignorance of the Supreme God, relying upon texts like:

“For they [i.e. Israel] being ignorant of God’s righteousness and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God[731].”

So, too, in the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians, Marcion rejects the passage which declares that Jesus shall come “in flaming fire taking vengeance[732],” which he considered inconsistent with the benevolence of Himself and His Father. We do not know whom he considered to be the Antichrist there predicted, as Epiphanius leaves us in doubt whether Marcion accepted the verses which go by the name of the Little Apocalypse, but Tertullian seems to imply that Marcion may have assigned this part to the Messiah of the Demiurge[733]. In like manner, he is said to have altered the passage in the Epistle to the Ephesians which speaks of “the mystery which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God[734],” so as to make it appear that the mystery was hid not in God, but from the god who created all things, meaning thereby the Demiurge[735].

Until some lucky discovery gives us the text of Marcion’s Antitheses it is difficult to say whether he has been correctly reported by his adversaries, or whether, which is probable enough, they have suppressed evidence brought forward by him in support of these erasures and interpolations. That in putting them forward, he did so in such a way as to leave many an opening to a skilled controversialist is easy to believe, and there are many passages in Tertullian’s refutation which show that his forensically-trained adversary took advantage of these with more eagerness than generosity. But the noteworthy thing about the long drawn out dialectic of Tertullian’s treatise Against Marcion, is the way in which Marcion throughout resolutely abstains from any of the allegorical or figurative interpolations of Scripture which we have seen so prevalent among all the Gnostic writers from Simon Magus down to the authors of the Pistis Sophia and its connected texts. Everywhere, it would seem, he took the Biblical texts that he quotes at their literal meaning and never seems to have attempted to translate any of them by trope or figure. In like manner, we find him, so far as his adversaries’ account goes, entirely free from that preoccupation concerning the divisions and order of the spiritual world which plays so large a part in the speculations of the systems hitherto described. Nor does he show any tendency to the deification of abstract ideas which is really at the root of all Gnostic systems whether before or after Christ. Nowhere does Marcion let fall an expression which could make us think of the Sophia or Wisdom of God as a separate entity or personified being, nor is the Logos of Plato and his Alexandrian admirers ever alluded to by him. Hence, he in no way contributes to the growth, so luxuriant in his time, of mythology and allegory[736]. In everything he exhibits the hard and unimaginative quality of the practical man.

These considerations have great bearing on the question of the source of his heresy. Had he busied himself, like the Gnostics, with elaborate descriptions of the invisible universe, one would have thought that he owed something to the ancient Egyptian theology, in which such speculations occupied nearly the whole care of its professors. Had he, on the other hand, studied to personify the attributes and qualities of the Supreme Being, one would have been able to connect his teaching with that of the Persian religion, in which, as will be seen in the next chapter, the idea of such personification took the principal place. This connection would have been natural enough, because the province of Pontus, whence Marcion came, had long been subject to the Persian power, and did not become Roman in name until the reign of Nero. Yet no trace of such a connection is even hinted at by adversaries perfectly well informed of the main tenets of the Persian religion[737]. The inference is therefore unavoidable that Marcion’s views were original, and that they were formed, as was said by a critic of the last century, by a sort of centrifugal process, and after rejecting in turn all heathen and Jewish elements, as well as most of the traditions which had already grown up in the Catholic Church[738]. That Marcion was aware of this seems probable from the many efforts made by him to be reconciled to the Church, or rather to convert the whole Church to his way of thinking. In this, as in the emphasis which he laid on faith rather than knowledge as the source of man’s happiness in this world and the next, he again anticipated in a most striking manner the views of the German Reformers some fourteen centuries later[739].

A like analogy is to be seen in the practices of the Marcionite churches, so far at any rate as we may trust to the reports of their orthodox opponents. True, as it would seem, to his conviction of the complete failure of the scheme of the Demiurge, Marcion set his face even more sternly than our own Puritans of Cromwell’s time against anything that should look like enjoyment of the things of this world[740]. His followers were enjoined to eat no meat, to abstain from wine even in the Eucharist, which in the Marcionite churches was celebrated with water, and to observe perpetually the strictest continence[741]. The Sabbath was kept by them as a fast and, although this may look like an obedience to Jewish custom, Epiphanius, who is our sole authority for the observance, tells us that Marcion expressly rejected this attribution[742]. Virginity was, according to him, the only state of life for the true Christian; and although he freely baptized unmarried men and eunuchs, he refused baptism to married persons, as has been said, until they were divorced or on the point of death[743]. To the enticements of the circus, the gladiatorial shows, and the theatre, the Marcionites used, according to Tertullian, to return the answer “God forbid!”; and they made the same reply, he tells us, when invited to save their lives in time of persecution by sacrificing a few grains of incense to the genius of the Emperor[744]. The reason of all this austerity was apparently their contempt for the kingdom of the Demiurge and their resolve to do nothing to prolong his rule.

Of the spread of the Marcionite heresy we have very little more information than that given above. Prof. Harnack thinks 150-190 A.D. was the “golden age of the Marcionites[745],” but Tertullian evidently considered that some thirty years after the last of these dates they were nearly as numerous as the Valentinians, whom he speaks of as the largest sect of heretics[746]. An inscription found in a Syrian village refers to a “synagogue” of Marcionites occupying a site there in 318 A.D.[747], which is, as has been remarked, older than the earliest dated inscription of the Catholic Church. Theodoret, too, about 440 A.D., boasts of having converted more than a thousand of them, a statement which afterwards swells into eight villages and supposes that they were pretty thickly clustered together[748]. Yet they must have led a miserable existence, being persecuted by the Imperial authorities and their Christian brethren at once, and it is not to be wondered at that Marcion himself addresses some followers in a letter quoted by Tertullian as “my partners in hate and wretchedness[749].” It speaks volumes for their faith that they continued to hold it in spite of everything.

This was the more to their credit that they were by no means at one in matters of belief. In a passage quoted in a former chapter, Tertullian says that the Marcionites thought it fair to do what Marcion had done, that is, to innovate on the faith according to their own pleasure. This is a rhetorical way of putting it; for the successors of Marcion seem to have differed among themselves mainly upon one point, which was, in fact, the number of “principles” which lay at the beginning of things[750]. Thanks to his Stoical training, Marcion was forced to assign a large part in the formation of the cosmos to Matter, which he nevertheless thought to be essentially evil. But in that case, how did it come into existence? It surely could not be the creation of the Supreme and benevolent Being whose name was Love; and if not, how did it come to exist independently of Him? To these questions it is possible that the essentially practical genius of Marcion saw no need to return any answer, and was content to regard them, like Epicurus before him, as insoluble problems. But his followers apparently refused to do so; and hence there arose considerable diversity of opinion. According to an Armenian author of late date, Marcion himself taught that there were three principles, that is, the Supreme God, the Demiurge or Creator, and Matter, which he regarded as a sort of spouse to the Demiurge[751]. This, however, is extremely unlikely in view of the unanimous assertion of the Fathers nearer to him in point of time that he taught the existence of two principles only; and it is probable that the theory of three principles, if seriously advanced, must have been the work of one of his followers. Tertullian, whose sophistry in combating Marcion’s teaching in this respect is here particularly apparent, points out, indeed, that if the Creator be held to be self-originated and not himself the creature of the Supreme God, there must be nine gods instead of two[752]; but there is no reason to suppose that Marcion ever troubled himself about such dialectical subtleties.

The case was different with Apelles, who was certainly later in date than Marcion and perhaps succeeded him in the headship of the sect, either immediately or at one remove[753]. According to Tertullian, Apelles left Rome for Alexandria where he no doubt came in contact with the Gnostic opinions there rife[754]. The slander that Tertullian sets on foot about him to the effect that he forsook his master’s continence and was addicted to the company of women is unexpectedly refuted by Tertullian’s contemporary, Rhodo[755]. But Apelles must have come in contact in Alexandria with the followers of Valentinus and other Gnostic teachers, and their arguments no doubt compelled him to modify the strict dualism of his master. According to Rhodo, Apelles asserted that there was only one principle of all things, which would imply that the Demiurge was the creature of the Supreme God, and that Matter, instead of being essentially evil and independent, must have been also created by Him. Hippolytus, who was possibly a little later than Rhodo, amplifies this by the statement that Apelles held the Demiurge to be the fashioner of things coming into being (subsequent to him)[756], and that there was a third god or angel of a fiery nature who inspired Moses, and even a fourth who was the cause of evil. In this the Gnostic idea of correspondence or reflection of one world in another is manifest; but it is evident that it also approaches more nearly than does the uncompromising dualism of Marcion himself to the teaching of the Catholic Church. The same tendency to compromise is evident in Apelles’ willingness to use the books of both the Old and the New Testament, quoting with regard to them, if Epiphanius is to be believed, the apocryphal saying of Jesus “Be ye wise money-changers!” to be found in, among other works, the Pistis Sophia[757]. Apelles seems also to have modified his master’s teaching with regard to the body of Jesus, which was, he said, no phantasm, but a real body of flesh and blood assumed by Him on His descent to the earth, and returned by Him piece by piece on His Ascension to the different elements whence it was drawn. His indebtedness in this to the sources from which the author of the Pistis Sophia drew the same doctrine needs no demonstration. Yet there is no reason to assert that Apelles considered these “corrections” of Marcion’s teaching in any way essential or binding on his followers. He seems, too, to have adopted one of the practices of the primitive Church in paying attention to the ecstatical visions of “prophets” of both sexes, his faith in the prophecies of a virgin named Philumene being the foundation of Tertullian’s slander on his morals. There can be no doubt, however, that in spite of these tendencies, he remained in essentials a true follower of Marcion, and that like his master, he deprecated enquiry into insoluble problems. “One ought not,” he said, as Rhodo reports, “to examine doctrine, but everyone should be steadfast in the faith. Those who trust in Him that was crucified will be saved, if only they do good works[758].” Herein he also, like Marcion himself, seems to have anticipated by many centuries the teaching of the German Reformers.

Other followers of Marcion there were who, thanks to our lack of information concerning them, are to us merely names. Thus Tatian, who was according to tradition a disciple of Justin Martyr but fell away from orthodoxy after his teacher’s death, seems to have held a kind of intermediate position between the two great schools of heresy. While teaching, according to Irenaeus, a system of aeons not unlike that of Valentinus, he adopted in full the notions of Marcion as to abstinence from marriage, from the eating of flesh, and from the use of wine, and may have been the founder of a separate sect called Encratites[759]. We hear, too, of one Prepon, “an Assyrian” or native of Syria, a follower of Marcion, whom Hippolytus represents as teaching that Jesus Himself was intermediate between the good and evil deities and came down to earth to be freed from all evil[760]. Rhodo also speaks[761] of Potitus and Basilicus, followers of Marcion, who held fast to his doctrine of two principles, while Syneros, as he affirms, led a school which asserted that there were three “natures.” Lucian also, who, according to Hippolytus and Epiphanius, came in point of time between Marcion and Apelles[762], may have inclined to the same doctrine, and taught, unlike Marcion, that there would be a resurrection, not of the body nor of the soul, but of some part of man which he also defined as being of a “third nature[763].”

The conversion of Constantine put a violent end to any open propagation of the doctrines of Marcion or his successors. In the picturesque words of Eusebius “the lurking-places of the heretics were broken up by the Emperor’s commands, and the savage beasts which they harboured were put to flight.” Hence, he goes on to tell us, many of those who had been “deceived” crept secretly into the Church, and were ready to secure their own safety by every sort of dissimulation[764]. This practice, as we have seen, had always been popular among the Gnostics properly so called, whose religion consisted in part in the knowledge of the formulas secretly imparted and preserved with jealous care from all but the initiated. Although there is no distinct proof that the same course was now adopted by the Marcionites, there is some reason for thinking that this was the case. The postponement of baptism noticed above must have early divided the members of the Marcionite churches into grades of which the largest was in an inferior position to the others. It is unlikely that these catechumens, who might witness but not share in the sacraments celebrated for their higher-placed brethren, should have courted persecution on behalf of a faith with which they were not fully entrusted. The outbreak of the Arian controversy, which followed so closely on the conversion of Constantine, also carried within the Catholic Church those speculations about the Divine nature which had hitherto formed a fruitful source of dissension among the Marcionites themselves. With their synagogues and meeting-places taken away from them and handed over to the Catholics, many of them must have looked about for some tolerated community which they could join, and of all that thus offered themselves, the Catholic Church offered the greatest inducements to them.

Yet another way was open to the convinced Marcionite who could not bring himself to reject Marcion’s view that the true purport of Jesus’ teaching had been obscured by the additions of Judaizing apostles. The sect of the followers of Manes, who began to show themselves in the Western part of the Roman Empire shortly before Constantine’s conversion, professed a dualism more uncompromising than any that Marcion had taught, and coupled with it an organization so skilful and effective that it was able for some ten centuries longer to defy the efforts of the rest of Christendom for its suppression. In its division of all Manichaeans into the two great classes of Perfect and Hearers it drew very close to Marcionite practice; and the liberty which it allowed the Hearers of outwardly professing any faith they pleased must have enabled the Marcionite who joined it to keep those articles of his former creed most dear to him without coming into violent collision with either Church or State. Hence the tradition seems well founded which asserts that the majority of those Marcionites, who did not become reconciled with the Catholic Church after Constantine’s alliance with it, joined the ranks of the Manichaeans, and so ceased to exist as a separate community[765].

The direct influence of Marcion’s teaching upon that of the Catholic Church was probably very small. In spite of the efforts of recent writers to maintain the contrary[766], it is difficult to see that this first attempt, honest and sincere as it undoubtedly was, at the reformation of Christianity ever bore fruit of lasting value. Its main principle which, as we have seen, was the rejection of the Jewish scriptures and their bearing upon the Mission of Jesus, has been ignored, since Marcion’s death as in his lifetime, by every other Church and sect professing Christian doctrines. His common-sense view, that the words of the Christian Bible must mean what their authors and their contemporaries would have naturally taken them to mean, and do not for the most part contain any deeply hidden or allegorical significance, was in like manner repudiated by the whole of Christendom, which, up to the latter part of the XIXth century, continued to construe the greater part of its sacred books by trope and figure[767]. There remains then only the asceticism and austerity that Marcion practised which the orthodox could have borrowed from him. But, we have seen that the religious abstinence from procreation, and from the use of meat and wine, can be traced back to the appearance of Orphism in Greece some five hundred years before the Birth of Christ; and if the Christian Church adopted, as it partly did, these practices in a modified form, it was by way of inheritance from a source which was much nearer to it than Marcion’s heresy. That many of Marcion’s ideas have been revived in our own day is likely enough, and this opinion has been put forward with much skill and point by Dr Foakes-Jackson in his Hulsean Lectures. But this is a case of revival rather than of descent, and a reformer who has to wait some eighteen centuries before his ideas meet with acceptance, may well be held to have failed to influence after ages.

Notwithstanding this, the heresy of Marcion will always have great interest for the student of the History of Religions. The success—fugitive as such things go, but real enough for a time—with which Marcion set up a Church over against that tremendous polity which has been called without much exaggeration “the very master-piece of human wisdom,” would be alone sufficient to make it precious in the eyes of those who are not blind to the romance of history. To archaeologists it is the more interesting that it is only in its direction that we are likely to receive in future much additional light upon the struggles of nascent Christianity with one category of its competitors. The very voluminous writings of the other Gnostics were destroyed by the triumphant Church with such minute care that the Coptic texts described in the last chapter form the only relics of this once enormous literature that have survived to us. The heathen religions which for some time disputed the ground with the Church have also left few traces partly for the same reason, and partly because the secrecy to which they pledged their votaries made it unlikely that many written documents of these faiths would survive. But the Antitheses of Marcion were in the hands of Photius in the Xth century; and, although it is dangerous to prophesy in such matters, it is by no means impossible that some lucky discovery within the borders of the Turkish Empire may yet give us a MS. that will enable us to reconstruct them. If that should ever be the case, we shall be in a far better position than we are now to decide whether the analogies between Marcionism and Protestantism that have been detected of late years are essential or superficial.

Footnote 685:

Chap. IX. p. 118 supra.

Footnote 686:

Renan, Marc Aurèle, p. 49. Cf. Dill, Nero to Marcus, pp. 473-477.

Footnote 687:

Renan, L’Église Chrétienne, pp. 31-33, and Hadrian’s letter there quoted.

Footnote 688:

Of the defences mentioned in the text the Apology of Quadratus is the only one still lost to us. Justin Martyr’s two Apologies are among the best known of patristic works. That of Aristides was found by Dr Rendel Harris in a Syriac MS. in 1889. For the identification of this by Dean Armitage Robinson with the story of Barlaam and Josaphat, see Cambridge Texts and Studies, vol. 1. No. 1.

Footnote 689:

The account of Marcion’s life given by Salmon (s.v. Marcion) in the Dict. Christian Biog. is here mostly followed. Abundant references to the Fathers and other sources are there given.

Footnote 690:

Tertullian’s talk (adv. Marcion. Bk I. c. 1) about its barbarism and the natives living in waggons is mere rhetoric. He probably knew nothing about the place.

Footnote 691:

Stoicae studiosus. Tertullian, de Praescript. c. XXX.

Footnote 692:

Id. adv. Marc. Bk IV. c. 4; and de Praescript. c. XXX., where the money is said to have been 200 sestertia or nearly £1800.

Footnote 693:

Tertullian, adv. Marc. Bk I. c. 2. Cf. Pseudo Tertullianus, adv. omn. Haer. c. XVI.

Footnote 694:

Neander, Ch. Hist. II. p. 150; cf. Tertullian, de Praescript. c. XLI.

Footnote 695:

Ibid. op. cit. c. XXX. Salmon (Dict. Christian Biog. s.v. Marcion) wishes to transfer this story to Cerdo.

Footnote 696:

Neander, Church Hist. II. p. 139, disbelieves it.

Footnote 697:

Justin Martyr, First Apol. cc. XXVI., LVIII. He writes as Marcion’s contemporary. Cf. Clem. Alex. Strom. Bk III. c. 3.

Footnote 698:

Epiphanius, Haer. XLII. p. 553, Oehler.

Footnote 699:

Tertullian, adv. Marc. Bk IV. c. 5.

Footnote 700:

Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. Bk IV. c. 14.

Footnote 701:

The council was held 692 A.D. See Salmon in Dict. Christian Biog. s.v. Marcion.

Footnote 702:

Tertullian, adv. Marc. Bk I. c. 27.

Footnote 703:

The story that he seduced a virgin is now generally held to mean merely that he corrupted the unsullied faith of the Church. Cf. Hegesippus in Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. Bk V. c. 22. So Salmon, art. cit. supra. As Neander points out (Ch. Hist. II. p. 136 note), Tertullian, had he known the story, would certainly have published it. Yet he contrasts Marcion’s chastity with the real or supposed incontinence of his follower, Apelles (de Praescript. c. XXX.).

Footnote 704:

Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 25, p. 219, Harvey.

Footnote 705:

Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk VII. c. 3, p. 370, Cruice.

Footnote 706:

So Salmon, art. cit., Renan, and others. This view, however, cannot apply to Justin Martyr who was, as we have seen, his contemporary. See n. 5. p. 205 supra.

Footnote 707:

See Salmon (Dict. Christian Biog. s.v. Marcion) for authorities.

Footnote 708:

See Harnack’s article on Marcion in Encyc. Brit. (11th ed.).

Footnote 709:

Tertullian, adv. Marc. Bk IV. c. 2. Marcion apparently knew nothing of St John’s Gospel, which may not have become public till after his death. Had he done so, as Renan says (L’Égl. Chrétienne, p. 71), he would probably have preferred it to any other, because of its markedly anti-Jewish tendency.

Footnote 710:

According to him, Jesus was not born of woman. Cf. Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk VII. c. 31, pp. 383-384, Cruice.

Footnote 711:

The whole controversy is well summed up in Matter, Hist. du Gnost. t. II. pp. 238-242.

Footnote 712:

See Matter, op. cit. t. II. pp. 246-260, where Marcion’s emendations are given chapter by chapter and their sources cited.

Footnote 713:

Hahn, in his Antitheses Marcionis gnostici, Königsberg, 1823, claimed to have restored this book, while Hilgenfeld has examined the extant remains of Marcion’s Gospel in Das Evangelium Marcions. He attempted to restore Marcion’s Apostolicon in the Zeitschr. für hist. Theol. 1855.

Footnote 714:

The Antitheses seem to have been seen by Photius in the Xth century, so that we need not despair.

Footnote 715:

Like the Eros-Phanes of the Orphics and the Ophite Agape. So Pausanias, Bk IX. c. 27, says the Lycomidae sang in the Mysteries hymns to Eros, which he had read, thanks to a δαδοῦχος or torch-bearer at Eleusis.

Footnote 716:

Tertullian, adv. Marc. Bk I. c. 2, says that Marcion is obliged to admit the existence of a Creator, because his work is manifest; but that he will never be able to prove that of a higher God than he—a mode of reasoning which might take him further than he intends.

Footnote 717:

Isaiah, xlv. 7.

Footnote 718:

Tertullian, adv. Marc. Bk III. c. 8.

Footnote 719:

Neander, Ch. Hist. II. pp. 142 sqq.

Footnote 720:

Tertullian, adv. Marc. Bk III. c. 24.

Footnote 721:

Op. cit. Bk III. c. 4. Cf Neander, Ch. Hist. II. p. 144.

Footnote 722:

Tertullian, op. cit. Bk V. c. 1.

Footnote 723:

Gal. i. 1. Tertullian, adv. Marc. Bk V., contains most of Marcion’s dealings with the Pauline Epistles.

Footnote 724:

Gal. i. 6, 7.

Footnote 725:

Gal. ii. 11 sqq.

Footnote 726:

Gal. iii. 14.

Footnote 727:

1 Cor. i. 21.

Footnote 728:

Tertullian, adv. Marc. Bk V. c. 5.

Footnote 729:

2 Cor. iv. 4. Cf. Tertullian, op. cit. Bk V. c. 11.

Footnote 730:

Tertullian, op. cit. Bk V. c. 14.

Footnote 731:

Rom. x. 2, 3.

Footnote 732:

2 Thess. i. 8. Cf. Tertullian, op. cit. Bk V. c. 16.

Footnote 733:

Epiphanius, Haer. XLII. p. 676, Oehler; Tertullian, loc. cit.

Footnote 734:

Ephes. iii. 8, 9.

Footnote 735:

Tertullian, op. cit. Bk V. c. 18.

Footnote 736:

But see n. 2, p. 217, infra.

Footnote 737:

As is plain from the words of Plutarch quoting, as is generally thought, Theopompus of Chios. See Is. et Os. cc. XLVI., XLVII. Al-Bîrûnî, Chronology, p. 189, says indeed that both Bardesanes and Marcion borrowed from Zoroaster. But this was eight centuries after Marcion’s death, and we have no evidence as to Al-Bîrûnî’s means of knowledge of his tenets.

Footnote 738:

Harvey’s Irenaeus, I. p. cli. There is a curious resemblance to Marcion’s Demiurge in the Clementine Homilies, XX. c. 2, where the king of this world who rules by law and rejoices in the destruction of sinners is mentioned. But the Homilies are probably Ebionite and certainly, in the form in which they have come down to us, later than Marcion.

Footnote 739:

Neander Antignostikus, Eng. ed. vol. II. p. 490, calls him the representative of the Protestant spirit. In modern times, it is perhaps sufficient to notice Harnack’s predilection, as shown in his Dogmengeschichte, for Marcion and his works. Foakes-Jackson, Some Christian Difficulties of the Second and Twentieth Centuries (Hulsean Lectures), Cambridge, 1903, pp. 19 sqq., thinks the study of the controversy between Marcion and Tertullian should especially appeal to Modernists.

Footnote 740:

Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk VII. c. 29, p. 378, Cruice.

Footnote 741:

Epiphanius, Haer. XLII. p. 556, Oehler.

Footnote 742:

Op. et loc. cit.

Footnote 743:

Tertullian, adv. Marc. Bk IV. c. 11. Cf. p. 207, supra.

Footnote 744:

Tertullian, op. cit. Bk I. c. 27.

Footnote 745:

Harnack in Encyclopaedia Britannica (11th ed.) s.v. “Marcion.”

Footnote 746:

He always couples Valentinus and Marcion together. Cf. de Praescpt. cc. XXIX., XXX. Justin Martyr, Marcion’s contemporary, says (First Apolog. c. XXVI.) that “he is even now teaching men of every nation to speak blasphemies.” Renan, L’Égl. Chrétienne, p. 363, thinks that the Marcionites were “much the most numerous sect before Arius.”

Footnote 747:

Foakes-Jackson, Hulsean Lectures, p. 108. Cf. Sanday, The Gospels in the 2nd Cent., Oxford, 1876, p. 236.

Footnote 748:

Theodoret, Epp. 113 and 145.

Footnote 749:

συμμισούμενοι καὶ συνταλαίπωροι: Tertullian, adv. Marc. Bk IV. cc. 9, 30.

Footnote 750:

See Neander, Ch. Hist. vol. II. pp. 151 sqq. and Matter, Hist. du Gnost. t. II. pp. 298, 304.

Footnote 751:

Eznig of Goghp, from whose History of the Armenian Church quotation has been made above. He says that Marcion taught that there were three heavens, in the highest of which dwelt the Good God, in the next the God of the (Jewish) Law, and in the third his angels. Below this lay Hyle or Matter who existed independently and was female. From the union of the God of the Law and Hyle, this earth was produced, after which its Father retired to his own heaven, leaving the earth to the rule of Hyle. When he desired to make man, Hyle supplied the dust of which he was formed, into which the God of the Law breathed his own spirit. Adam became the adorer of Hyle, upon which the God of the Law informed him that, if he worshipped any other God but him, he should die. On this Adam withdrew from Hyle, and this last, becoming jealous, made a number of gods and filled the world with them. Hence all men were cast into hell at death, until the Good God looked down from the highest heaven, had pity on them, and sent his Son to deliver the “spirits in prison,” which He did directly He went down into hell after His own death. After Jesus had revealed Himself to the Creator and received his confession of ignorance, Jesus illuminated Paul and made him His apostle. It is extremely unlikely that this story should have formed part of Marcion’s own teaching, although it may possibly have been told by some follower of his of Semitic blood, or, as Salmon suggests, by Cerdo. It is to be found in Neumann’s translation of Eznig in the Zeitschr. für hist. Theol. vol. IV. and in the Dict. Christian Biog. s.v. Marcion.

Footnote 752:

Tertullian, adv. Marc. Bk I. c. 16.

Footnote 753:

Epiphanius, Haer. XLII. p. 688, Oehler, says Marcion was succeeded by Lucian, whom Apelles followed. Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk VII. cc. 37, 38, p. 393, Cruice, is probably the source of Epiphanius’ statement; but he does not seem to have had any first-hand knowledge of the Marcionite heresy or its chiefs, and is not here so good a witness as Tertullian, or Irenaeus, who mentions neither Lucian nor Apelles.

Footnote 754:

Tertullian, de Praescript. c. XXX.

Footnote 755:

Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. Bk IV. c. 13.

Footnote 756:

ἐδημιούργησε τὰ γενόμενα. Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk VII. c. 37, p. 393, Cruice.

Footnote 757:

Epiphanius, Haer. XLII. p. 694, Oehler. The same Logion or saying is also found in Clem. Alex. Strom. Bk I. c. 28, in the Apostolical Constitutions, Bk II. c. 37, and in Clem. Hom. XVIII. c. 20.

Footnote 758:

Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. Bk V. c. 13.

Footnote 759:

Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 26, § 1, p. 220, Harvey. According to Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk VIII. c. 16, p. 416, Cruice, he had been a disciple of Justin Martyr.

Footnote 760:

Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk VII. c. 31, p. 382, Cruice.

Footnote 761:

Eusebius, op. et loc. cit. supra.

Footnote 762:

Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk VII. c. 37, p. 393, Cruice; Epiphanius, Haer. XLIII. p. 688, Oehler.

Footnote 763:

Tertullian, de Resurrectione, c. II.

Footnote 764:

Eusebius, Vita Constantini, Bk III. cc. 64-66.

Footnote 765:

So Salmon in Dict. Christian Biog. and Harnack in Encyclopaedia Britannica, both s.v. Marcion.

Footnote 766:

Hatch, H.L. p. 77, n. 1, quoting Harnack.

Footnote 767:

Hatch, op. cit. pp. 75, 76, shows that the allegorical method introduced by the Gnostics in order to avoid the difficulty of reconciling the Old Testament with the New was at first scornfully rejected, but was soon adopted by the orthodox, and was pursued by both Catholic and Protestant writers up to a few years ago.

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